July 24, 2020 – Crossing the Neum border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the corona era has a slightly different procedure.
July 24 update – TCN passed through the Neum Corridor twice this week. Waiting times at both borders were under 3 minutes on both occasions. Passports are scanned on the Croatian side and you have one hour to transit through. There were no border guards on the BiH side. There are no issues with any nationality transiting through.
PLEASE NOTE: THIS SITUATION CONTINUES TO BE THE CASE AFTER JULY 1 BORDER OPENING UPDATE. IF YOU ARE IN TRANSIT, YOU CAN PASS THROUGH.
One of the most-asked questions every summer is from tourists wanting to travel between Split and Dubrovnik, and what happens at the Neum Corridor, the 23-km coastal strip, sometimes called the Bosnian Riviera, which divides Dubrovnik and southern Dalmatia from the rest of Croatia? With Croatia now in the EU and on the brink of joining the Schengen zone, it means that a journey between Dalmatia’s most popular tourism cities entails leaving the EU for about 20 minutes, before reentering Croatia at the Neum border.
The usual procedures are explained in this Total Croatia article on how to get from Split to Dubrovnik. If you don’t want to leave Croatia, it is possible to stay within the country by taking the ferry service from Ploce on the mainland across to Trpanj on the Peljesac Peninsula. The Peljesac Bridge is also due for completion in 2022, at which point independent Croatia will be joined in one contiguous territory for the first time.
On my recent tour of the Croatian border control system, I asked about Neum and was surprised to learn that there was a change in the border crossing rules during the pandemic, a change which has been in force for a couple of months now, I think.
The Neum border is currently ONLY available for transit passengers. As such, you can travel on an ID, but your stay in BiH is timed. You have an hour to cross the 23 km. Your journey is timed, and if you take more than an hour, you will have problems as you try and reenter Croatia.
The Bosnian border police are also actively encouraging those who pass through the Neum border that this is transit only.
I always stop for lunch at Neum when I am driving down to Albania or Montenegro, but I guess this is discouraged for the moment.
If anyone has any experiences of recent travel across the Neum border, please let me know, and we will add to this resource. Send to [email protected] Subject Neum.
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