“I hereby swear on my honour that as a Croatian citizen I will respect the Constitution and laws and the legal order, culture and customs of the Republic of Croatia,” reads the text of the oath of allegiance for foreign nationals who cannot obtain Croatian citizenship based on their ethnic origin or place of birth.
The regulation on the oath of allegiance and the text of the oath were published on Thursday by Minister of the Interior Davor Božinović after the government gave up on its initial plan to include the oath and its text in the Croatian Citizenship Act.
In late 2018 the government embarked on amending the Croatian Citizenship Act to make it include a formal naturalisation oath of allegiance, incorporating in the relevant draft the text of the oath and description of the oath-taking procedure.
The previous conditions for obtaining Croatian citizenship by naturalisation, such as the age of majority, knowledge of the Croatian language and script, and an uninterrupted stay of eight years in Croatia’s territory, remain in force.
Under the initial proposal by the Andrej Plenković government, candidates for Croatian citizenship were to take a naturalisation oath of allegiance collectively, once a year, on the occasion of national holidays in counties, towns and municipalities in the country and in Croatia’s diplomatic offices abroad.
However, in the final version of the bill, which was adopted by the parliament in October 2019, the text of the oath and the oath-taking procedure were left out and the Minister of the Interior was instructed to adopt a separate regulation on the matter, which he did on Thursday.
According to the regulation, the text of the oath remains the same but instead of collective oath-taking on the occasion of national holidays, candidates for Croatian citizenship will take the oath of allegiance in the offices of police departments at the invitation of police or in Croatia’s diplomatic offices abroad.
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