ZAGREB, 1 January 2022 - The Cravat Regiment, a Croatian guard of honor, performed the traditional changing of guard ceremony on Saturday on the occasion of the New Year Day.

Dressed in replicas of the uniform worn by Croatian soldiers in the 17th century, the regiment's members held the ceremony in Zagreb's main square after the Grič cannon fired a shot at noon.

The cravat regiment consists of 17 members including four cavalrymen who lined up in Zagreb's main square in uniforms worn by Croatian soldiers during the Thirty Years' War.

Today's ceremony was held under the auspices of the Zagreb Tourist Board.

For more, check out our lifestyle section.

ZAGREB, 1 January 2022 - On Saturday, the very first day of 2022, dozens of local residents took part in the traditional New Year Day's swim in Pula, Opatija, Zadar, Šibenik, and a few more Adriatic cities.

In Pula, some 40 swimmers joined in celebrating New Year's Day by participating in the first swim of the year in the Mornar bathing facility. During the event held at noon, they wished a happy new year to other residents of Pula.

In Opatija, a dozen swimmers called Kukali braved winter conditions, including a sea temperature of just 12 degrees Celsius. In an effort to warm up, they consumed sparkling wine before diving into the seawater. On New Year's Eve, Kukali swimmers took a dive in Bajer Lake in the town of Fužine in the Rijeka hinterland.

In Šibenik, this traditional event took part on the Banj Beach, and in Zadar, brave swimmers gathered at the landmark called Sea Organ.

In Split, several revelers played the local traditional ball game "picigin" in the sea at Bačvice Beach, one of the landmarks of that biggest Croatian Adriatic city.

Apart from swimming in the seawater on the first day of the new year, some Croatians dive in rivers or lakes and ponds either on New Year's Eve or on the first day of the new year.

For more, check out our lifestyle section.

ZAGREB, 1 January 2021 - Entry into the U.S visa waiver program, French President Emmanuel Macron's visit, and the Rafale jets purchase deal, the fulfillment of the criteria for the Schengen Area, and diplomatic efforts to help solve the Bosnia and Herzegovina crisis are major features of Croatia's diplomacy in 2021.

In the year which will be remembered for global travel restrictions due to the COVID pandemic, Croatia entered the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), which makes it possible for Croatians to travel to the United States for business or tourism purposes without visas, after obtaining approval via the online Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA.

Croatia formally entered the VWP on 23 October, after meeting strict conditions.

For a country to enter the VWP, it must meet criteria regarding the fight against terrorism, law enforcement, immigration, document security, and border management, and the percentage of rejected visa applications must be below 3%, which Croatia met only recently.

EU says Croatia fulfills conditions for the application of Schengen acquis

On 9 December, EU member states agreed on the text of draft conclusions confirming that Croatia has fulfilled the necessary conditions for the application of the Schengen acquis, which paves the way for a final decision on accession to the area without internal border controls.

The final decision could be adopted in about six months during the French EU Presidency. It requires the consent of all Schengen member states.

Also, as of 1 January 2022, Croatian nationals will have the same status as citizens of other European Union member states on the Swiss labor market, which will provide fresh impetus to Croatian-Swiss relations, it was said at a meeting of the two countries foreign ministers in Bern on 23 November 2021.

Macron's visit, Rafale purchase

In 2021, Emmanuel Macron visited Croatia as the first French president to pay an official visit to Zagreb since the country gained independence.

During his stay in Zagreb on 25 November, a deal was signed on the purchase of 12 Dassault Rafale F3R used multipurpose fighter jets - ten single-seats and two two-seaters - for €999 million, to be paid in five installments from 2022 to 2026.

Macron said in Zagreb that he supported Croatia's entry into the passport-free Schengen Area and added that Croatia had implemented all the necessary reforms for its entry into the euro area.

The French head of state and Prime Minister Andrej Plenković signed a strategic partnership declaration.

In October, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez visited Zagreb as the first Spanish head of government to visit Croatia.

On 8 July, European Commission President Ursula von der Layen arrived in Zagreb to convey the Commission's approval for Croatia's recovery and resilience plan (NPOO), worth €6.3 billion, which could significantly boost the country's Gross Domestic Product and create 21,000 new jobs by 2026.

Under the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility, Croatia has €6.3 billion in grants and 3.6 billion in favorable loans at its disposal.

On 6 July, Seychellois Foreign Minister Sylvester Radegonde arrived in Zagreb and opened an honorary consulate.

In September, Montenegrin President Milo Đukanović was in Zagreb for an official visit and after his talks with his Croatian host, Zoran Milanović, Đukanović warned that "Serbian world" is a euphemism for Great Serbia policy.

Crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina

During their bilateral meetings with their counterparts in 2021, Croatia's diplomats raised the issue of the situation in the southeast of Europe, particularly Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Croatia's diplomatic offensive was launched in 2021 ahead of the election year in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In October 2022, Bosnia and Herzegovina are due to hold general elections. Election reform is needed before that and negotiations on it are currently underway.

The Croats, one of the three constituent peoples in the country, want to avoid a repeat of the scenario in which Bosniaks actually elect senior officeholders who are supposed to represent the Croats, the least numerous constituent people.

The crisis is further deepened by the Serb representative in Bosnia's three-member presidency, Milorad Dodik, who is implementing "a creeping" secession of the country's Serb entity.

In March 2021, Croatia's Foreign and European Affairs Minister, Gordan Grlić Radman, outlined Croatia's non-paper for its southeastern neighbor. The paper, which was also supported by EU member-states Slovenia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, and Cyprus, highlights the importance of adhering to the principle of the three constituent peoples.

Throughout 2021, some of the political actors in Sarajevo accused Zagreb of trying to violate the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Željko Komšić, who sits on the BiH Presidency as the Croat representative although he won the post thanks to the votes of Bosniak voters, accused Zagreb of the construction of a gas pipeline under the River Sava to connect Slavonski Brod and Bosanski Brod in the Serb entity. Some politicians in Sarajevo also disapproved of Zagreb's decision to declare an exclusive economic zone in the Adriatic.

In July, Zagreb Mufti Aziz Hasanović said that current bilateral relations between Croatia and Bosnia were worse than during the Croat-Bosniak conflict in the 1992-1995 war.

However, visiting Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said in Sarajevo on 13 December that the bonds between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina are unbreakable and that Croatia remains Bosnia and Herzegovina's greatest friend and advocate in the European Union.

At the end of the year, on 19 December, President Zoran Milanović's visit to central Bosnia was canceled for security reasons against a background of discussions provoked by Milanović's comments on the application of the term genocide for the atrocities committed by Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica in July 1995. Bosniak politicians bear a grudge against Milanović who in return calls them unitarianists.

The issue of protection of the status of the Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina has become another bone of contention between Milanović and Plenković, with Milanović resenting the government's failure to make sure the Council of the EU conclusions on enlargement incorporate the term "constituent peoples" in the Bosnia and Herzegovina section of the document.

Relations with Serbia

Tensions in relations between Zagreb and Belgrade traditionally become heightened in August when Croatia celebrates Victory Day in memory of the 1995 Operation Storm when Croatia's military and police forces liberated a majority of areas held by Serb rebels since 1992.

This year, things got worse in September when Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić called on all Serbs to display the Serbian flag on Serbian Unity, Freedom, and National Flag Day, observed for the first time this year, on 15 September.

However, Croatian Serb leader Milorad Pupovac called on ethnic Serbs to respect the laws in Croatia which ban the display of foreign countries' flags by individuals.

For us it was important to make it clear in which circumstances individuals in Croatia and individuals in Serbia could display flags of other countries. It is important for us that the Serbs in Croatia can be sure that they can display their ethnic flag on holidays concerning their institutions or on important holidays on official events, Pupovac said at the time.

Also, relations between the two countries were adversely affected by the decision of the city council in Subotica, where Vučić's Serb Progressive Party holds a majority, to declare the Bunjevci dialect an official language in that northern Serbian city despite opposition from the Croat community in Vojvodina and from Croatia.

The demand for declaring its speech an official language in Subotica was made by the Bunjevci community, which denies its Croat ethnic background.

The initiative was strongly opposed by the DSHV party of local Croats, the Croatian National Council in Serbia, the Croatian Language Institute, and other Croatian science institutions, and it prompted the Croatian Foreign Ministry to send two protest notes to Serbia.

They all say there is no legal basis for the initiative and that the Bunjevci speech is a dialect of the Croatian community in Vojvodina's northern region of Bačka and not a standard language.

Furthermore, in October Plenković asked Vučić to address the issue of Serbian grammar books that negate the existence of the Croatian language.

No progress has been made in the provision of information by Serbia about sites of mass graves from the 1991-95 war.

Relations with Slovenia at the highest level ever

Croatia's political leaders have underscored that the Zagreb-Ljubljana relations are at the highest level ever. Plenković and his Slovenian counterpart Janez Janša seem willing to settle all the bilateral issues.

The friendship between the two neighbors was evidenced by ceremonies held on 18 October when the two presidents, Milanović and Borut Pahor, unveiled a monument to a leader of the Croatian National Revival, Ljudevit Gaj, in Ljubljana and to a Slovenian poet, France Prešeren, in Zagreb's Bundek Park.

Croatia and Italy declared exclusive economic zones in the Adriatic, and they included Slovenia in the process.

In February, the Croatian parliament proclaimed an exclusive economic zone in the Adriatic, giving Croatia additional rights in relation to the Ecological and Fisheries Protection Zone declared in 2003 to build artificial islands and exploit the sea, wind, and currents in that zone in line with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Concerning Croatia-Hungary relations, the most important event was the ruling of Croatia's Supreme Court upholding the guilty verdict against Hungarian executive Zsolt Hernadi in a graft scandal implicating former Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader and business relations between MOL and INA. Croatia's Justice Minister Ivan Malenica expects Budapest to extradite Hernadi who was given two years for white-collar crimes.

Frictions in relations with Bulgaria and Austria

Milanović's criticism of how Bulgaria treats North Macedonia on its journey towards the European Union prompted the Bulgarian government to summon Croatia's ambassador in Sofia in mid-May.

Ambassador Jasna Ognjanovac was summoned at the request of Minister Svetlan Stoev, and was received by the Director-General for European Affairs, Rumen Alexandrov.

The reason for the meeting was Milanović's statement after a summit of the Brdo-Brijuni Process at Brdo Pri Kranju, in which he sharply criticized Bulgaria's policy towards the European integration of North Macedonia. Milanović warned that North Macedonia "is in an impossible position" and that one EU member state demanded that North Macedonia "define its national genesis in the way requested by the neighboring state" in history textbooks. He said that he would "openly oppose" that within his powers.

His statement was an allusion to Bulgaria, which is rejecting a negotiating framework for North Macedonia because, as Sofia claims, North Macedonian textbooks "revise and negate their common ethnic and linguistic history."

Milanović's comments on Austria's decision to lock down unvaccinated persons prompted Vienna to summon Croatian Ambassador Danijel Glunčić.

Glunčić declined to reveal details of the discussion but according to a statement from the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Glunčić was called over "highly unusual statements by the Croatian president," which were "sharply rejected".

"Comparing the measures against the coronavirus pandemic to fascism is unacceptable. It is our responsibility to protect the citizens of Austria and we are acting accordingly," the Austrian ministry said, as quoted by APA news agency.

Austrian media quoted the Croatian president as saying after an audience with Pope Francis in the Vatican that the Austrian decision to impose a lockdown on unvaccinated people was "reminiscent of the 1930s" and called it foolish. On 22 November, the Croatian President's foreign affairs advisor, Neven Pelicarić, held talks with Austrian Ambassador Josef Markus Wuketich. Earlier that day, President Milanović said in the town of Našice that he had apologized for his statement.

"I said that what was happening in Austria reminded me of fascism. I apologize," Milanović said in a statement to the press.

For more on politics, follow TCN's dedicated page.

ZAGREB, 1 January 2021 - Single-use plastic carrier bags that are between 15 and 50 microns thick are no longer in use in Croatia as of Saturday, 1 January.

The Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development has called on Croatians to carry cloth and paper bags when going shopping.

The exception to the ban that goes into force as of the first day of 2022, is very light plastic bags with particle sizes under 15 microns. They are used for bulk food.

The use of all other plastic bags will be phased out.

For more, check out our lifestyle section.

January 1, 2022 - Croatia's premier sunshine island of Hvar welcomes 2022 in traditional fashion, as the Polar Donkeys take to the Adriatic for the first swim of the year.

People start a new year in different ways. Many with new resolutions, many more with hangovers. 

But if you are looking for a novel way to blow away the cobwebs of the previous year, head to Bonj les Bains at 13:00 on New Year's Day where the annual New Year's Day swim, organised by Polarni Tovari (the Polar Donkeys) takes place.  

Now in its 7th year, the Polar Donkeys swim is attended each year by an increasing number of enthusiasts of the two and four-legged variety, and 2022 was no exception, as you can see from this year's video, below. 

Hvar, of course, is no stranger to winter tourism, for it was hear that organised tourism in Europe began back in 1868, with the formation of the Hvar Health Society. The 'Austrian Madeira', as Hvar was known to convalescing aristocrats from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was famed for its temperate 12-month climate. 

With the 2022 Hvar swimming season now officially open, why not jump in yourself?

Alternatively, there is plenty of other activity on the Adriatic at this time of year.

(Photo credit Taliah Bradbury)

TCN Junior took to the waters around Hvar yesterday to try her hand at squid fishing. And with considerable success, but with the fishing and with the camera, two skills her father has so far failed to master.  

There may have been bigger parties elsewhere, but there is something soothing about Dalmatia away from the crowds, away from the season. 

If you have never tried it and are looking for a complete detox, there is nothing quite like it. 

As for swimming on New Year's Day, that is also a skill I have yet to master, but I heartily commend the brave Polar Donkeys who maintain this wonderful tradition. 

To learn more about the magic of this incredible island, check out the TC Hvar in a Page guide. 

ZAGREB, Jan 2021 - Croatia's environmental affairs in 2021 were marked by the declaration of Dinara as the 12th nature park and the awarding of the status of UNESCO designated site to the Mura-Drava-Danube Biosphere Reserve.

On 5 February, the Croatian parliament unanimously adopted a law declaring Mount Dinara the 12th nature park in Croatia. The nature park encompasses Croatia's section of Mount Dinara as well as Mt Troglav and Mt Kamešnica, the upper course of the Cetina River and the Hrvatačko, Paško, and Vrličko karst fields. It extends over two counties - Split-Dalmatia and Šibenik-Knin -- measuring almost 63,000 hectares in area. Dinara is part of the Dinaric Alps, also commonly known as the Dinarides, a mountain range in Southern and Southeastern Europe.

On 15 September, UNESCO's international coordinating council designated the transboundary biosphere reserve which stretches along the Drava, Mura, and Danube Rivers as the first biosphere reserve extending through five countries: Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, and Serbia. The Mura, Drava, and Danube Rivers form a 700-kilometer-long green belt, also known as the Amazon of Europe, connecting almost a million hectares of unique terrain with significant natural and cultural heritage, becoming the first five-country biosphere reserve in the world.

Legislative activities in environment protection

In July, the Croatian parliament passed a law banning the use of plastic carrier bags that are between 15 and 50 microns thick as of 1 January 2022, while other types of plastic bags will be phased out in the coming period.

A project aimed at better management of plastic waste has begun, and the first comprehensive national statistical survey on food waste was conducted.

The Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development said that a strong positive trend of waste separation, collection, and recycling continued.

The waste sorting rate in 2020 was 41%, rising by 15 percentage points since 2016. Of the total municipal waste, 56% was landfilled and 34% recovered, which is an increase of 13 percentage points compared with 2016.

Prelog among best towns in Europe in sustainable waste management, Šibenik builds Bikarac waste management plant

In mid-December, the Zero Waste Europe network published new best sustainable waste management practices in Europe, including those in the northern Croatian town of Prelog and 11 neighboring municipalities.

Prelog, the first Croatian town to adopt a zero-waste strategy, and 11 neighboring municipalities (Belica, Donja Dubrava, Donji Vidovec, Sveta Marija, Goričan, Donji Kraljevec, Kotoriba, Dekanovec, Domašinec, Martijanec, Podturen), improved their result in total waste sorting from 57.25% in 2019 to 65.23% in 2020.

On 21 December, the City of Šibenik's waste management center began a test run of the HRK 245 million Bikarac waste management plant, with Economy and Sustainable Development Minister Tomislav Ćorić praising Šibenik for setting an example to other cities on how to resolve the issue of waste management. Currently, about 73,000 tonnes of waste is delivered to Bikarac with more than 40,000 tonnes of municipal waste. The capacity of the mechanical-biological plant is to process about 70,000 tonnes of waste a year.

In June, Parliament adopted the national low carbon development strategy until 2030 with an outlook until 2050.

For more, check out our lifestyle section.

ZAGREB, 1 Jan 2021 -  Croatia has registered 5,293 new coronavirus cases and 33 COVID-related deaths in the last 24 hours, the national coronavirus response team reported on Saturday.

The number of active cases in the country currently stands at 29,895. Among them are 1,752 infected persons receiving hospital treatment, including 226 who are on ventilators, and 19,935 persons are self-isolating.

A total of 3,771,640 tests for the SARS-CoV-2 virus have been conducted to date, including 14,224 in the last 24 hours when the positivity rate was 37.2%.

Since 25 February 2020, when the first case of this infectious disease was confirmed in the country, 720,538 people have been registered as having contracted the new virus, of whom 12,571 have died and 678,072 have recovered, including 2,922 in the last 24 hours.

To date, 63.05% of adult Croatians have been vaccinated.

For all you need to know about coronavirus specific to Croatia, make sure to bookmark our dedicated section and select your preferred language if it isn't English.

ZAGREB, 1 Jan 2021 - France took the six-month rotating EU presidency from Slovenia on Saturday.

The French chairmanship comes during a key period for French President Emmanuel Macron, who is expected to run for reelection in April. Recently, Macron unveiled Paris' priorities for the French EU presidency: sovereignty, the defense policy, the Western Balkans, economic growth. The EU presidential trio led by France includes also the Czech Republic that will preside over the EU in the second half of 2022, and Sweden in the first half of 2023.

Slovenia's achievements

A few days ago, just before the completion of Slovenia's chairmanship, Interior Minister Aleš Hojs said that the agreed conclusion of all EU member states that Croatia is ready to join the Schengen zone was one of the two biggest achievements of his country's presidency of the Council of the EU.

Speaking at a press conference about the results of the Slovenian presidency of the EU, Hojs said that the second important achievement was the adoption of a joint statement on Afghanistan after the Taliban again took power in that country.

The statement reaffirmed Slovenia's position that another mass wave of migrants into Europe, similar to one that followed the outbreak of war in Syria, must not be allowed again, that the migration problem should be tackled in countries adjacent to Afghanistan, and that the families of Afghans who had cooperated with the EU and its institutions should be transferred to Europe.

For more on politics, follow TCN's dedicated page.