The pounding of official stamps has sounded out the rhythm of bureaucracy in Croatia for decades, well after many other European nations had stopped relying on paper and went digital.
Practically any government or business document in the country has required some sort of official seal or endorsement.
All that stamping and paper-shuffling helped make life in Croatia a Kafkaesque morass, though, so the government has decided it’s time to stamp out the stamp before it suffocates an already weak economy.
Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic recently ordered official rubber stamps out of nearly every aspect of Croatian life. But the new rules will be phased in over the course of the year — and to put them into effect, some documents will probably have to be stamped.
It will surely take a while for the government and ordinary citizens alike to shed the deeply rooted clah-thunking habit.
The country’s National Archives contains more than 1,000 official seals, some dating to feudal times, that were used by titled nobles, elected politicians and every functionary in between to bash their imprimatur in wax and ink. Croatia’s national seal even had its own dedicated guard until 2000.
The New York Times
