ZAGREB, July 12, 2020 – Contrary to expectations, Croatia has not fully closed its borders for citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, Jutarnji List daily said on Sunday.
Those with BiH or Serbian citizenship who are also citizens of an EU member state may continue to freely enter and stay in Croatia without restrictions, regardless of where they come from.
Although the number of new coronavirus cases in BiH and Serbia is rising exponentially, Croatia continues to allow some of their citizens to enter its territory, a move justified by the fight for the best tourist season possible.
According to the National Tourist Board, about 5,000 tourists from Serbia and about 11,000 from BiH are currently in Croatia. They applied to enter via the eVisitor app. Those numbers do not include weekend tourists from Herzegovina who come to spend one day on the Croatian coast.
There are about half a million foreign tourists in Croatia at the moment, mainly from Germany, Austria, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. There are 92,000 Slovenians, for instance, and Germans account for 90% of last year’s figure at this time.
Due to the drastic increase in coronavirus cases in Croatia, German media, notably the Bildt paper, have been campaigning against going to Croatia. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has called on Hungarians not to holiday on the Adriatic but on Lake Balaton.
For now, not one of the countries whose tourists generate the most arrivals in Croatia have put Croatia on their coronavirus red list or prescribed that those arriving from Croatia must self-isolate, the daily said.
