This paper explores various dimensions of the legal principle of university autonomy as defined within the framework of studies conducted by the EUA. These are organisation, financial, staffing and academic autonomy. Their essential features are questioned from the angle of their formative concretisation in the legal system of the Republic of Croatia. In the context of the foundation of the EHEA, which necessarily includes the need for harmonisation of the autonomy principle as the supreme legal principle in European (national) higher education and science systems, such harmonisation, in addition to the perspective of normativism, is also discussed in the context of social objectives and functions placed before universities as a measure of accomplishment of their autonomy and public responsibility.