The counties are primary territorial subdivisions of the Republic of Croatia. In Croatian they are called županije in plural and županija in singular form.

There is a total of 21 counties in the country.

History

The counties were introduced in the 1990 Constitution of Croatia, and only slightly changed up to present.

Previously, in socialist Yugoslavia, the Croatian Republic was divided into općine (sing. općina) which were generally smaller than the present counties. The designation općina has been retained for municipalities which are one level smaller than the županije and much smaller than the old općine.

The political representatives elected for county government used to form a Chamber of Counties (Županijski dom) in the Croatian Parliament, between 1993 and 2001.

Organization

Each county has an assembly (županijska skupština) which is composed of representatives elected by popular vote, using party-list proportional representation, for four-year terms. The county assembly elects the executive county leadership, decides on the yearly budget, the county properties etc.

The leader of a county is a župan (sometimes translated as "prefect"), who has up to twelve deputies each called a dožupan. The župan presides over the county's executive government (županijsko poglavarstvo), and represents the county in external affairs.

List of counties

The list of counties, grouped into historic and geographic larger regions:

Naming

The suffixes -čka, -ska in the local names indicate genitive, and so the full local name of each of them is $name županija, so e.g. Karlovačka's full name is Karlovačka županija. Some counties also prefer to swap the order of those two words but they are in the minority (since February 7, 1997 when the order was officially changed).

Zagreb itself is grad, a city, due to its importance it's separated from its county and given similar jurisdiction.

See also

• Etymology of županija