June 14, 2021 - England and Croatia met on Sunday at Wembley Stadium in London to open Group D of EURO 2020. Only one goal decided the winner, which England scored in the 57th minute. But is getting first place in the group really the best option? A look at why second place in Group D is better for Croatia. 

Croatia met host England on Sunday in front of 22,500 fans - 22,000 of which were for England. Croatia was not only up against England's home-pitch advantage, but because of the strict COVID-19 measures still in place in the, only Croatia fans already inside of the UK were able to make it to the game. While there weren't many, they certainly stood out in their red and white checks at Wembley Stadium.

While Croatia's first 15 minutes of play were shaky, with England hitting the far post already in the first few minutes of the match, they found their footing after the 20th minute and moved up with pitch with attacking plays, but were still plagued with the same issue as always - scoring. 

Otherwise, the match between England and Croatia was incredibly even, which you can see displayed in the statistics below. 

But is Croatia's loss to England so bad, after all? When talking about the group stage and crossover in the round of 16 - not at all. 

Since UEFA implemented the current competition format at the 2016 European Championships, in which 16 of the 24 national teams participating advance to the second round, four points are enough for the knockout phase, and maybe even three. In simpler terms, this means a single victory. 

Two national teams advance to the round of 16 from each of the six groups, followed by the top four third-place teams. 

Losing at Wembley is really not such a bad thing, because the team that finishes first in Group D will crossover with the 'group of death,' playing the second-place team of Group F, which includes France, Portugal, Germany, and Hungary.

This draw is far more difficult than getting second place in Group D, which crosses over with the second-placed team from Group E (Spain, Poland, Sweden, Slovakia) in the round of 16. If Croatia finishes third, they will play the winner of Group B (likely Belgium), the winner of Group E (likely Spain), or the winner of Group C (Netherlands). Thus, winning four to six points in the two remaining games will cement the second-place spot. 

Croatia will play next on Friday, June 18, against the Czech Republic in Glasgow. 

To follow the latest sports news in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

To learn more about sport in Croatia, CLICK HERE. 

June 14th, 2021 - President Zoran Milanović's statement that the Croatian government did not react to an attempt by some countries to have the Dayton agreement and Bosnia and Herzegovina's three constituent peoples left out of a NATO declaration closing is groundless, Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić Radman has said.

Earlier on Sunday, President Milanović said that some countries did not want the closing declaration of the coming NATO summit in Brussels to mention the Dayton peace agreement and Bosnia and Herzegovina's three constituent peoples but that Croatia would not consent to it.

"That statement is totally unsubstantiated," Grlić Radman said.

Grlić Radman claims that as far as Bosnia and Herzegovina is concerned, a formulation in one of the paragraphs, proposed by the Croatian government, was accepted and that the formulation refers to the Dayton agreement, the constituent peoples, equality and reform processes, notably amendment of the country's election law.

"We have agreed that the Dayton agreement and reform processes, that is, the election law, will be mentioned in that paragraph... President Milanović is not telling the truth, we have all the documents," said Grlić Radman, noting that the government had constantly been working on the protection of the status of the Croat people in BiH.

Asked by reporters if he would support President Milanović if he refused to sign the document in case it did not include the said formulation about BiH, the minister did not give a clear answer.

"The Brussels summit is not dedicated to BiH, the document in question has some 50 pages, and we want to agree that text with our allies, the summit is not decisive for the status of the Croat people in BiH anyway," the minister said about the contentious document, repeating several times that it had been agreed that the document would mention, in one paragraph, "the Dayton agreement and reform processes, that is, the election law."

Commenting on Milanović's statement about his father having been a Communist official who got reach through privatization, Grlić Radman said that the statement was scandalous and proud of his father, who had been a patriot and benefactor.

As for Milanović's statement that he was "lamenting the fate of Croats in Communism," Grlić Radman said that any mention of the word Croat meant danger in Yugoslavia.

"You could not sing ordinary patriotic songs such as 'Marjane, Marjane' and 'Vila Velebita'," he said, describing the former state as "a totalitarian, centralist and unitarist system, with one people dominating diplomacy, finances, police and defense structures."

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

June 14th, 2021 - The 15th Festival of Tolerance, to take place on 1-10 July at Zagreb's Lake Bundek, will feature a rich program with recent films selected in accordance with the festival's mission to promote tolerance, dialogue, and respect.

About 50 films will be screened at the festival, including a Dutch music documentary, "Here We Move Here We Groove," a Czech youth film, "The Pack," which deals with peer violence in sports, the Oscar contender "Quo Vadis, Aida?" about the genocide in Srebrenica and others.

Festival director Nataša Popović said this year's edition presented them with new challenges, but they were sure that the 15th Festival of Tolerance would be the biggest so far.

"What has been important to us all these years, to promote tolerance, solidarity, and peace, will continue to be our goal," she said.

The visitors will also be able to see three exhibitions that will encourage them to think about what tolerance is and how far we are willing to advocate it.

"About fifty films from around the world have been selected in accordance with our mission, which is most easily described as advocating a democratic society, tolerance, and respect for human rights," the Festival's program director, Hrvoje Pukšec, said.

Exhibitions on the topic of refugees

The 15th Festival of Tolerance will also feature exhibitions dealing with refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers in Croatian society.

The aim is to raise awareness of the refugee problem by reminding the public that such a situation can happen to anyone and view refugees in the same way we view ourselves.

An exhibition and performance on the topic of refugees have been prepared in cooperation with UNHCR Croatia.

The program will also include an exhibition of photographs by award-winning Austrian photographer Christopher Mavrič prepared in cooperation with the Austrian Cultural Forum, featuring portraits of people with disabilities. Finally, the author warns that we thought about the quality of life in old age.

The accompanying program includes performances by renowned musicians, such as Porto Morto, Vlatko Stefanovski, Edo Maajka, TBF, Dramas from Austria, and Ex Auro from Hungary.

Admission to screenings is free, and it is co-financed by the City of Zagreb, the Croatian Audiovisual Centre (HAVC), UNHCR Croatia, and other partners.

For more on lifestyle in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

June the 14th, 2021 - The Croatian covid bus doesn't quite sound like a vehicle you'd be too quick to board from the name alone, but this new way of continuing the vaccination rollout across the country is likely to do very well indeed.

The administrative processes around getting vaccinated against the novel coronavirus have caused general levels of interest to drop. In typical Croatian fashion, the registration process was mired in problems, with the cijepise platform infamously collapsing and having many question marks hanging over its head. Now people who don't have HZZO or a GP, of which there are a great many, are struggling to register to get vaccinated.

The Croatian covid bus will work to get as many people vaccinated as possible by travelling to numerous areas across the nation carrying vaccine doses and administering them there and then.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, vaccination from the Croatian covid bus is set to begin today in the continental Virovitica-Podravina County, and the Minister of Health, Vili Beros, and the director of the Croatian Institute of Public Health, Krunoslav Capak, were present at the promotion of this brand new method of vaccination.

This new method of vaccination via the Croatian covid bus in Virovitica-Podravina County will be implemented from the 14th to the 18th of June. On Monday, the June 14th, the vaccination process will be carried out in six places in that particular continental Croatian county: Stari Gradac, Otrovanec, Velika Cresnjevica, Turnasica, Spisic Bukovica and Busetina, N1 reports.

The Croatian covid bus will, as has been previously agreed, tour the areas of the counties it will remain in for a while and stay for a certain amount of time in smaller places, some of which don't have any health facilities in their area at all.

For all you need to know about coronavirus specific to Croatia, including travel, border and quarantine rules, as well as the locations of vaccination points and testing centres up and down the country, make sure to bookmark our dedicated COVID-19 section and select your preferred language.

June the 14th, 2021 - The Croatian construction industry is hungry for workers in spite of the ongoing coronavirus crisis which has thrown a proverbial spanner in the works of almost every segment of the economy and as such jobs. The sector is even keeping its eyes on foreign workers as the need is now so great.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Suzana Varosanec writes, from the beginning of this year to June the 11th, 2,434 employers submitted 14,437 applications to the CES for positions in the Croatian construction industry, for which a labour market test doesn't need to be conducted.

Most of them were submitted on the lookout for masons, building workers, carpenters, civil engineering workers, facade workers, reinforcement workers, installers of building elements, ceramic tile installers and even house painters. A positive opinion of the CES was issued for 9541 of them, on the basis of which the Ministry of the Interior (MUP) can issue a work permit for a foreign worker from a third (non-EEA) country.

The Croatian construction sector, which is growing from the current 100,000 workers in legal entities, is ''hungry'' for, apparently, foreign labor. After the Croatian Law on Foreigners, commonly referred to as the Aliens Act, prescribed a new employment model for third-country nationals, employers must first contact the CES to conduct a labour market test (by first seeking that labour on the Croatian market), with exceptions such as the extension of residence permits and work for the same employer and the same third-country national, as well as in the case of missing occupations on the CES public list.

In cases when this test is conducted, the Regional Office, ie the CES office, conducts the mediation procedure if there are persons in the Croatian unemployment register who meet the requirements of the employer and are obliged to inform the employer of that no later than fifteen days from the date of the employer's request.

If the market test has shown that there are no persons already registered who meet the requirements, the employer can then apply for a residence and work permit (the result of which is decided on by the Ministry of Interior), within 90 days of receiving such a response from the CES.

When applying to MUP for those residence and work permits, the would-be employer must enclose evidence of the third country employee successfully meeting all of the requirements required by the CES market test - their level of education, their work experience, and all of the other conditions specified in order for an approval.

For more, follow our business section.

June 14, 2021 - TCN meets Sime Lisica, the director of Audio Visual Group d.o.o. who is shaking up the Croatian fitness industry with a new product - FitnessTV.

I was born and bred in Sydney Australia, a city of 5 million people, with an extremely fast pace of life. In my early 30s, I had realized that my calling, my higher purpose in life was coming from Croatia, so I decided to do something about it. I had come to the conclusion that Australia had dramatically changed from the country that I once knew, the country that I grew up in would never be the same again. That’s not to say that I am not internally grateful for my time in Australia, it taught me everything that I know, I transferred my skills over to Croatia, although believe me nothing can prepare you correctly for this country.

I have been lucky enough to have worked all over the world, I have seen and experienced all sorts of different realities but the truth of the matter is that today I consider myself a digital nomad who has transitioned, although I still thoroughly enjoy working remotely, especially from my current “office” location at Harbor Cookhouse & Club in Zadar. In business, it’s important to have structure. I have so much OCD that in my attempts to remain structured I will sit/rotate between the same three tables and use the same power outlets, drink the same amount of coffees and do the same things every day to continue in an effort to repeat the same success rate. 

I realized a long time ago that the Croatian Audio-Visual industry was nonexistent and quality products were hard to come by let alone a quality workforce that knows what to do – every week people are leaving the country because they are under the impression that life is better outside Croatia’s borders, I find that to be far from the truth.

I set out to probe the market, completed my due diligence, and came up with a plan. I am extremely brand loyal and I absolutely refuse to use sub-standard products, because of my brand stubbornness, this meant that I lost projects as I was too expensive. Of course, I was ok with that, where I came from, we do things right the first time, it makes no sense to continuously return to a project because you used a sub-standard product from the very beginning.

In 2015 I formed Audio Visual Group (AVG for short). We are a company that focuses on delivering large scale Audio, Visual and Lighting projects, for some time now we have been working internationally both in Fitness audio/visual/lighting & digital advertisement, whereas on cruise ship drydocks we mostly focused on ship-wide integrated audio and lighting projects, both in Australia and Singapore although our reach has also been on board superyachts in the EU. The corona crisis hit us hard, we had already booked in two drydocks that were cancelled, another major project in Croatia hit the wall so we had to come up with something new, something that didn’t exist in Croatia, this was FitnessTV.

In 2020, I started to expand this rapidly, I bought Ivan Kutija into the company, he is our CTO, I have known Ivan for a long time, from the first time I met him I immediately knew that this was one extremely talented individual, I also knew that I would never find anyone with his caliber, I harassed Ivan (much to the displeasure of his wife, the minister for war and finance – sorry Daria! I have firm reasoning behind my decisions) to join me in my venture and here we are today. Next to come onboard was Ana Kašelić, I was introduced to Ana in early 2020. Ana was also born in Australia and that suited me perfectly. Ana is PA to the management team. After some time I had realized in her previous employment that she was in a toxic working environment, I never understood why employees in Croatia are treated like crap, it is almost as if they try to strike the fear of God into the employee, that is not the formula for productivity or the key to success. I assured Ana that would not be the case in AVG and here she is today, a positive life changer.

Now that we have grown significantly, I have made offers to fill another two positions to round out our upper management team, as much as I want to, I am unable to comment on who these individuals are as they are still currently employed, one position is CXO, the individual who will fill this position was personally picked by Ivan Kutija. They are another amazing talent who is perfectly suited to this company, while the CFO position has been offered, I don’t think it will be easy to pull this individual away from the position they currently hold. I’m extremely confident that this highly competent individual is both the right fit for AVG and key to steering the finances in the right direction. I have the utmost respect for this person, just like when I met Ivan for the first time, internally I knew! It would give me great pleasure to have them on board.

The last 18 months

Our first attempt to resolve the corona issue within the company was to secure a tender for a large scale DOOH (digital out of home) project in the Zadarska Zupanija, this involved the installation of 110sqm of external digital signage, this, unfortunately, dragged out with a large number of public institutions requiring us to seek approval (it’s ridiculous that even Vodovod has to give us permission, what does Vodovod have to do with Digital Signage?) the public institution that rejected us was Hrvatske Ceste who took no less than 4 months to provide us with a 4-page report of outdated laws why we cannot proceed with this project. To this day I believe that outside influence has played a major role in AVG not being able to proceed with this tender. You only need to look at any number of other countries where you will find amazing DOOH projects that are completely in the public interest.

I should draw on the disparity of the above, all over Croatia, you will find static signage “posađeno u divljini”  that would translate to planted on the wild ground. Some of this signage is less than 1m away from the road, Zadar is absolutely littered with the crap! I’m certain that more than 50% of these static signage operators don’t pay the city what they are owed. Croatia is like the wild west of static signage. When you come forth with a solid plan to transition into the digital future, your immediately shut down by the bureaucratic process. This is not the free market, this is a closed market only available to nepotists.

Inadvertently the public institution that issued the original tender (who also has communication issues, they are not the only ones, no public institution is capable of communicating between themselves or externally for that matter) has now lost out on a significant amount of rent money that they desperately needed. They can thank Hrvatske Ceste for that.

In parallel with this, we won and then lost a tender issued by Općina Bibinje for three more DOOH locations on the Adriatic highway. This would have amounted to 136sqm of digital signage, Hrvatske Ceste quoted outdated laws from the time of Josip Broz Tito. In fact, if you examine the law closely, you will find that two of these locations fall within the guidelines, this time around Općina Bibinje losses out on the rent money – what a joke. Hrvatske Ceste appears to be a law of their own or perhaps again some sort of outside influence has affected these decisions.

It’s difficult to ascertain who is telling the truth in a country full of uhljebs and interlopers. I now possess a uhljeb radar that has recently been equipped with an interloper upgrade which is active 24/7/365. For anyone who is not clear on what is a “Uhljeb” or “Interloper” then I encourage you to look it up, you will find it rather entertaining.

The above is an absolute failure, an embarrassment, a complete waste of time, money, and resources, it did nothing but place my business in the red zone, on top of losing two cruise ship projects severely damaged us, that is why we turned back to the fitness industry. Only forward-thinking, healthy-minded, active gym owners would understand what we can do for them and I am ever grateful for this.

What is FitnessTV, how did we enter an investment round with an American VC fund and who are our German Technology partners?

I think it's first important to briefly describe Fitness 1.0/2.0 & 3.0

Fitness 1.0: The potential new member first tried to do some jogging, recreational activities, bought weights for home, kept a fitness diary, tried eating the right foods. This was proving ineffective and non-motivational so this person joined a gym, worked out, paid for a personal trainer, used in some cases substandard equipment, this was somewhat improving this member's life. The member remained committed and it was working. I do not disagree that this model works but it’s the model that Croatia is operating on, this model has existed since the 1800s, it was the one and the only model until roughly 2010-2012.

Fitness 2.0: The explosion of fitness apps and new ways to track your progress was a huge benefit to both the fit & unfit individual, it meant that they didn’t need to go to the gym, your mobile would tell you what to do! In retrospect, it’s also had a major positive influence on the fitness industry as it grew the industry at a phenomenal pace. Over the last few years, the number of wearable fitness devices, smart clothing, and the like has also exploded, creating with it sub-industries and new fitness models.

The Croatian fitness industry missed out on bridging the gap between Fitness 1.0 and Fitness 2.0. International operators were the early adopters of the new tech and they aligned the fitness venue with this new form of fitness digitalization.

Fitness 3.0: This is where we are today, worldwide, fitness companies are finding ways to integrate and adopt new technologies, especially with fitness equipment such as treadmills bikes, and finding ways to combine them with wearables. An explosion in wearable devices, smart clothing, and fitness applications still exists and is increasing exponentially year-in-year-out, this continues to create fitness sub-industries, one of these being Gym Digitization. Although the problem still remains, how will the Croatian Fitness Industry bridge the digitization gap? This is where FitnessTV and our products come into play.

One thing is for sure - sound, vision, and lighting play a pivotal role in the member experience. Not just in fitness, you can extend that across a vast range of industries.

FitnessTV is Croatia’s Premiere Interactive Fitness & Lifestyle Network. I have had these ideas floating around my head for some time now, especially after having an extremely negative experience with one of the gym operators way back in 2019. I knew what was available and in use at an international level, given that I had previously worked for the Tier One fitness brands, I decided that this was what I had to do. Over the Christmas/New Year break 2020/2021 I locked myself in the house for two weeks and began typing up the business case. On the 26th of January, I had the final cut and on the 29th of January at 14:00 we released the concept to our first gym partners.

We had instant success, by 16:00 we had already started to receive positive feedback and the gym owners started to book us in for consultations. The influx of gyms came in over the next few days and we set out on the road to visit our new potential partners. Success continued and over the next 6-8 weeks all we did was travel across Croatia and visit the gyms that wanted to see us. We have a 100% strike rate with all the gyms that we visited. The Minimal Viable Product was born!

The offer to our gym partners was that we would supply all new Audio-Visual products, free-of-charge, everything was at our cost. This involved new professional TVs, new audio, and an infrastructure network required to pull the Croatian Fitness Industry out of the Fitness 1.0 loop. Further, we would supply a music entertainment channel and a digital signage network, we would also pay the costs of HDS-ZAMP who are also another useless department that do nothing but collect money by imposing a “thin-air-tax” on playing music in the public domain, I would compare this to the tax on cubic meter volume when you build or legalize a property. It’s always been beyond me that “air” is a taxable commodity, soon we will be paying tax on the air we breathe, we already pay tax on rainwater, so in theory, the clouds are also a taxable commodity. Which team of uhljebs come up with this shit?

Of course, nothing is completely free to the gym operators, somehow we have to pay for this, we have covered the costs by playing appropriate non-intrusive advertisements for products/services that lean towards fitness, health, and lifestyle. This was the only way to keep this product free-of-charge to gym operators, pay for HDS-ZAMP and cover the high equipment/infrastructure costs that we would need to make this project a reality.

I had realized while travelling around Croatia and visiting our new gym partners that this was getting out of control, it felt like overnight we had accumulated more than 250 individual TV locations with enough audio equipment to put on a rock concert, I needed to do something quickly to mitigate this.

I had approached my “so-called loyal bank” who did nothing but waste my time. I wish I could share the generic email the CEO of this bank sent to all his “loyal clients” – total bullshit and a total troglodyte! Unfortunately, Croatian banks are geared so that they make it near impossible for you to operate in a free market (give me an Australian bank any day of the week, I would have been pre-approved in 15 minutes!) The vulture practices of Croatian banks have a completely negative impact on business, this is another Croatian industry full of uhljebs, full of individuals who have purchased diplomas and are absolutely unfit to hold positions of authority. This is an industry where complete reform is required should Croatian business move in a positive direction. What is more embarrassing is that in the last month the banks have received a significant amount of funding from the European Union, instead of passing this onto business, they have lifted the guidelines required by the business to obtain these funds – Welcome to Croatia, where the disparity is first and foremost!

Now I claim to be a highly intelligent individual so I decided to give up on the banks and looked towards private equity. I decided that I would first approach the handful of Croatian VC funds and try my luck, we more or less immediately had success with one VC fund who were initially hot on us, only to be turned down by them without any feedback other than the claim that they are not obliged to provide feedback and that we are the wrong fit, I thought what a rude generic response, what a total disappointment.

I had approached more than one VC fund, I knew that Croatian & EU VC funds are extremely allergic to large-scale hardware projects, the rejections kept rolling in, my disappointment grew on a daily basis. I must comment that one Croatian fund provided positive feedback and gave me the space to provide my rebuttals. Following our conversations, I was told to return for consideration in Series A funding. Where I came from, the absolute minimum requirement is an explanation, that how you engage respect, for example; imagine while working on a cruise ship in drydock where you have deadlines and a whole system of higher achy at our 10:00 am meetings. Imagine if I said that we are not obliged to provide feedback, I would walk the plank for that!

We can use technology to help us, for example, wearables can give us fairly accurate information on our work-out. What if outside of the gym the personal trainer can use aspects of telehealth where they remotely use this information to monitor the health and fitness of their client? What if they can then create meal & training plans and use this app to communicate with the member? What if this member upon arrival in the gym, uses this wearable device to log in to pre-programmed exercise programs? What if we can use gamification by creating competitions where partner gyms compete against each other remotely and of course the member can watch & listen to FitnessTV remotely away from the gym.

What if right! The possibilities are endless! We will be actively working to refine this application with our gym partners.

One thing is very clear, you must keep the member engaged with the club, without Gym Digitization, then this is not possible.

In conclusion, I must give thanks and praise, first of all, our gym partners where in the very near future you will find FitnessTV and our associated products. In Zadar, we have La Palestra and Popaj, Balboa Gym Biograd, in Šibenik we have Life Gym, in Rijeka we have Spartacus, Top Form, Fitness Zagrad and Fit For Life, Erny’s Pula, Gen Fitness Center Poreč while in Zagreb we have both locations for Gladiator Gym, Sparta Gym, Vita Fitness, Elite Fit, First Fitness & Squash Tower, Fitness Facility, MT Taekwondo, and Dynamic Fitness Centar.

Of course, we have room to expand the network. To the Split gyms we have made contact with, it’s not clear to us what the problem is? We wouldn’t be calling you for no reason! You know we also want you onboard. If you’re a gym operator, please don’t hesitate to contact our team, we speak fitness!

Finally, a special shoutout goes to Harbor Cookhouse & Club located on the Zadarska Riva, as I am truly a digital nomad at heart, I had to revert back to my roots to make this a reality. I have been working from this location for the last 6-8 months, this is a class property perfectly suited to the digital nomad. If I didn’t have this facility available to me, then there is no way I would have been able to correctly refine this product. In the time I have been here, I have estimated it to be in the vicinity of 700 man-hours split between a number of projects. Amazing the amount of work you can get done when you have the right facility. If you are a Digital Nomad reading this, then don’t hesitate to explore the Zadarska Zupanija, we need more nomads here to teach people that tourism should not and cannot be relied upon, connect with the Croatian Digital Nomad Association (DNA) alternatively I highly recommend Saltwater Nomads and follow the dedicated Digital Nomad section of Total Croatia News.

If you're living in the diaspora and you're giving heavy consideration to returning to Croatia, then I highly recommend that you take the bull by the horns, take control of your life and DO IT! This country is crying out for talented individuals, this country needs us and our international ideas to progress in a forward direction. Don’t give up on your dreams, don’t give up on what you believe in, turn them into realities! Don’t be phased by all the negativity, I assure you there is light at the end of the tunnel, Don’t allow Uhljebs, Interlopers, or “Troglodytes” for that matter into your life. Don’t take shit from anyone, be proud of who you are, hold your head up high. Watch our interview on Startup Rant for a more informal discussion on the above topics! In Croatia, there is an ecosystem of positive individuals who are operating in parallel with this outdated system. Connect with them and you will find that your world will change for the better!

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For more on business in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page. 

14 June 2021 – After unstable weather throughout spring, Croatians and their guests are finally going to see summer weather, perfect for the beach. A look at temperatures in Croatia this week. 

Croatians, especially along the coast, have been complaining about relatively cool May. By June, the coastal region of Dalmatia is usually seeing busy beaches and plenty of people enjoying the warm Adriatic Sea. This year, however, temperatures are rising slowly and the weather has been quite unstable. This is about to change according to index.hr. During the week we are to see rising temperatures across Croatia exceeding 30°c for the first time this year.

Monday will most probably remain unstable with windy and cool weather in the areas of high elevation and northern Bura wind potentially very strong around the Velebit Mountain region. The remainder of the week will be more stable with rising temperatures. We are to see true summer temperatures in Croatia. Already on Monday, we are expecting daily values in Central Croatia to reach 23°c-25°c, while those in Dalmatia will be reaching daily highs of 26°c-28°c. As it stands now, many Croatians and foreign visitors to the country will enjoy true beach weather this week. Many will be relieved after struggling with chilly waters and fickle weather throughout may and the beginning of June.

Potential for Heat Wave

All is not well for those without a high tolerance for heat. Croatia might be getting the first heatwave of the year. These instances of hot weather that border on unhealthy levels are nothing unusual in Croatia. Every summer there are days when government warnings about health hazards tied to high-temperature exposure need to be broadcasted. The danger of heatstroke and sunburn are all too real during the hottest days on the Croatian coast. If you are visiting Croatia in the second half of the week, make sure to pack plenty of sunscreen and water. Locals will just be happy to finally be able to switch completely to summer clothes.    

For more information to help you make the best of your Croatian holiday, check out our travel section.

ZAGREB, 13 June, 2021 - Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Presidency member Željko Komšić said on Sunday Croatia was about to come into conflict with NATO after President Zoran Milanović said that he would not accept a NATO closing declaration if it failed to mention the Dayton agreement and BiH's three constituent peoples.

"Croatia is coming into conflict with NATO because it insists on the obsolete concept of constituent peoples," Komšić, who is the Croat member of the tripartite BiH Presidency, was quoted by the BiH Presidency as saying.

Komšić believes that Croatia does not have the power to block the principles of the declaration to be adopted at the end of a NATO summit to be held in Brussels on Monday.

"A country like Croatia can hardly prevent what is in NATO's interest, and it can even less do so by advocating what is contrary to NATO and EU standards," he added.

The European Court of Human Rights rulings regarding election reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the country's national programme of reforms, sent to NATO, prefer the quality of all citizens, Komšić said.

"NATO should now decide if it cares more about its standards and interests or the anti-NATO and anti-European standards of Croatian officials," Komšić said.

Croat parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina contest Komšić's legitimacy as the Croat member of the country's three-member presidency, claiming that he was elected predominantly by Bosniak voters.

The leaders of NATO's 30 member-states, including President Milanović, will gather in Brussels on Monday for a summit at which decisions on the alliance's reforms in the period until 2030 are expected to be made.

Milanović has said that he will not consent to the summit's closing declaration if it failed to mention the Dayton agreement, which put an end to the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995, and its three constituent peoples.

"I do not intend to return to Zagreb with that. It shows what kind of plans for Bosnia and Herzegovina some international circles have and Croatia will not agree to that," Milanović said.

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