May 3, 2020 – Beware the Croatian inspector – a new series courtesy of Glas Poduzetnika (Voice of Entrepreneurs), highlighting a Croatian business reality that helps kill growth, profit, and entrepreneurship. You Don’t Have a Price List in a Foreign Language?
I have seen them operating all over the country over the last 18 years, the most feared visitors to Croatia’s cafes, restaurants, and other businesses – the Croatian inspector.
As with many corrupt countries, the role of the inspector should be to make sure that the rules are being adhered to in the particular area they specialize in – sanitary, fiscal, etc – but in reality, the prime motivation is to find ways to fill the State coffers and their own. Allegedly.
I heard SO many stories of inspections where perfectly run businesses end up paying thousands in fines, some of it justified, much of it grossly unfair. And there is an old truism here:
If the Croatian inspector comes to visit, he will find something, even if there is nothing there.
It is a subject that I have wanted to cover for years, but I never had quite the right material. Until now.
Huge thanks to those very proactive chaps at Glas Poduzetnika, who are really becoming a force for change to be reckoned with. A really great initiative. In one of their latest moves, they have been collecting some of their members’ experiences with the Croatian inspector, to highlight the issue and the realities of doing business in Beautiful Croatia.
Story #8: You Don’t Have a Price List in a Foreign Language?
I have been in the hospitality business for 25 years, and for the past 15 years, I have had a coffee bar in a shopping center in the far West of the city.
One day the inspector comes and searches for all the documents, just like everyone else before him, and when he was sure that everything was in order, he asked us to bring him the price list. He took it, looked through, and said,
“SO YOU DON’T HAVE THE PRICELIST IN ANY FOREIGN LANGUAGE???”
I said I didn’t know about that law, but if necessary, I will have them on the tables tomorrow. I point out that we are a coffee bar, and all that is needed is the translation of 5 – 6 words such as coffee, tea, beer, wine, while everything else is brand names which do not require translation. When I asked when that law was introduced, he replied proudly, “Parliament passed that a month ago, and you should have had it done.”
To my comment that I will correct this “such big mistake” and print out the new pricelists, he said that won’t be possible because he caught me in violation. I couldn’t believe it.
Fine: 5,000 kn for the legal entity and 2,500 for me as the responsible person, but if I pay within 7 days, I will have a 50% reduction. I naively wrote a complaint and received a response of 4–5 pages, that everything was done according to the rules and that the inspector did his job correctly.
DISASTER! This is just a small example of being subject to inspectors’ bullying in the past 25 years. I could even write a collection of the inspectors’ pearls.
Beware the Croatian Inspector is a new daily series (yes, there really is that much material) which you can follow here.
If you have a Croatian inspector story you would like to share with the Glas Poduzetnika team (in English or Croatian), you can do so via [email protected] Subject TCN inspector.
You can follow the 55,000+ others on the Glas Poduzetnika Facebook page.
