Dutch Media: Why Portugal Received Regional Travel Advice and Croatia Did Not

July 22, 2020 – Dutch media on why Croatia was put on the orange list, thereby requiring a recommended 14-day self-isolation on return from Croatia.

We received a message from a reader in the Netherlands:

Yesterday the Dutch government gave a negative travel advice for Croatia. Lots of Dutch people already booked a holiday in Croatia, but now they can’t travel. Lots of people were surprised, because in Istria (where lots of Dutch people go during the summer holiday) there is no Corona contamination. The people want to know why they don’t give regional advice instead of for the whole country. The explanation was: because the Croatian government did not supply us with up-to-date information, we cannot do anything else than advise against travel to Croatia.

Croatia’s borders remain open to all countries from the EU, EEA and the UK without restriction. In the last couple of days, however, first Lithuania and now the Netherlands have placed a 14-day self-isolation requirement on those returning from a holiday in Croatia. It seems a strange decision to many, given the worse situation elsewhere, but Dutch media is suggesting that part of the problem might be our old friend, Croatian bureaucracy.

As Croatia ‘breathes tourism’, to quote the somewhat ill-judged corona-era metaphor of outgoing Minister of Tourism, Gari Cappelli, and while the Croatian police are busy answering all the tourism emails, it appears that the Kings of Accidental Tourism are still too busy to update the relevant EU partner authorities with the important information. When I asked our reader for a source, she provided a source:

According to RIVM the National Institute of Public Health spokesperson Loes Hartman, this has to do with a shortage of data. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) receives data from European countries on a daily basis. That information is then forwarded to RIVM. “Croatia is only divided into two regions: the information is not available in more detail,” Hartman explains. “There was not much difference between those two regions. You should ask Croatia why so little data is being sent.”

“Portugal did send more detailed information. “That country literally said: here we have outbreaks.” As a result, RIVM had the necessary data to make regional decisions.

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