Italian language in Croatia
As of 2009, the Italian language is officially used in twenty cities and municipalities and ten other settlements in Croatia, according to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. It is an officially recognized minority language in Istria County, where it is spoken by 6.83% of the population on the aggregate and closer to 50% of the population in certain subdivisions.
Linguistic rights
Croatian language is the stated to be the official language of Croatia in Article 3 of the Croatian constitution. The same Article of Constitution stipulates that in some of local units, with the Croatian language and Latin script, in official use may be introduce another language and Cyrillic or some other script under the conditions prescribed by law. The only example of the use of minority language at the regional level currently is Istria County where official languages are Croatian and Italian. In eastern Croatia, in Joint Council of Municipalities, at local (municipal) level is introduced Serbian as co official language. Each municipality, where a certain minority has more than one third of the population, can if it wants to introduce a minority language in official use.