Page 155 - Секретаријат за законодавство

Anti-discrimination (OG 85/08), including the exemption for sexual
discrimination regarding insurance services in accordance with Article
5 (2). In October 2012 the Law on Anti-discrimination was amended
(OG 112/12) where, among other things, the provision on exemptions
regarding insurance services was abolished in order to be aligned with
the judgment of the Court at the date of accession.

Transposition of EU soft law

Other EU acts as recommendations, resolutions, and opinions do not
have any binding force and consequently do not have direct effect, but
at the same time they are instruments that are used in many different
policy areas. They do not require speciÞc transposition into domestic
law, due to their nature, but the EU institutions urge national authori-
ties in the Member States when regulating certain policy areas to take
them into account. As an example we can refer to the Commission
Recommendation 2003/361/EC of 6 May 2003 concerning the deÞni-
tion of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises

In this Recommendation the Commission points out that in a single
market with no internal frontiers, it is essential that measures in favour
of SMEs are based on a common deÞnition to improve their consisten-
cy and effectiveness, and to limit distortions of competition. This is all
the more necessary given the extensive interaction between national
and EU measures to help SMEs in areas such as regional development
and research funding. The Recommendation establishes a common
SME deÞnition which has been widely applied throughout the Euro-
pean Union. For Member States, use of the deÞnition is voluntary, but
the Commission is inviting them, together with the European Invest-
ment Bank (EIB) and the European Investment Fund (EIF) to apply it
as widely as possible. Taking this into account, Croatia has transposed
the deÞnition from the Recommendation in its Law for the promotion
of the development of SMEs (OG 29/02, 63/07, 53/12, 56/13).

Reference to EU legal act

According to the Decision on aligning Croatian legislation with the
EU Acquis from 2011 the competent authorities responsible for draft-
ing legislation shall state in a separate article of the Þrst title of the

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