March 22, 2021 - It's increasingly likely that there will be no Easter tourism in Croatia this year as the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across Europe.

Although no one seriously counted on tourist traffic for Easter, which falls relatively early this year, the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic that is spreading across Europe has sunk the last hopes for the arrival of foreign tourists in Croatia, reports Poslovni.hr.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Croatian tourism will obviously rely almost exclusively on domestic guests in this pre-season. Still, the current epidemiological situation does not promise much here either.

Although it was announced earlier, there will be no 'Vacation-Worthy Week' campaign this spring, as it has been postponed to the fall. The Cro-card did not pick up as planned, either. 

Part of the hotels, or a total of about 1,100 in Croatia, will try to open their doors. 

One of the larger hotel houses selling Easter packages is Aminess hotels and camps, which announced the opening of facilities in Novigrad and on the island of Krk.

The Aminess Maestral Hotel in Novigrad will be the first to open its doors this Friday, March 26, while the nearby Aminess Sirena camp will open on April 1. The first guests will be welcomed on April 1 at Aminess Atea Camping Resort and Aminess Gaia Green Villas in Njivice on Krk.

“Aminess hotels and camps will present a unique gourmet offer this Easter holiday, which will be further enriched with the award-winning Aminess olive oil Vergal for all lovers of Istrian delicacies. We look forward to the first guests at our tourist destinations this year.

The year behind us was challenging, but we are optimistic about the future," says Mladen Knežević, Sales and Marketing Director of Aminess, whose facilities have been awarded the Safe Stay in Croatia label.

An Easter opening was also announced by Poreč's Plava laguna, which will try to fill its facilities with domestic guests by joining the Croatian tourist card (Cro Card) project.

From now on, all holders of the Cro Card will receive a 10 percent discount at Plava Laguna facilities and the mobile homes in the Istracamping campsites.

"We are glad that we got involved in this project to encourage our local guests to spend their holidays in Croatia.

Plava Laguna has facilities in Poreč, Umag, and Rijeka, so we invite all those interested to use their tourist cards for their weekend vacations or their summer vacation in our facilities. Guests can choose accommodation in one of our four resorts, 25 hotels or 13 suites.

The Cro Card is a great project that encourages domestic tourism, which is extremely important to us in this pandemic time, especially because other European countries will want to keep domestic guests in their countries," said Plava Laguna.

However, for now, they still have nothing to look forward to when it comes to realizing the Cro Card because this project is still in its infancy, largely due to the pandemic.

According to the Ministry of Tourism and Sports, from July 1, 2020, to February 28, 2021, a total of 15,507 transactions were realized. Only 2728 tourist cards were issued by the Croatian Postal Bank (HPB) in the mentioned period.

As it is known, the Croatian tourist card is a project of the Government of the Republic of Croatia and the Ministry of Tourism and Sports to increase the consumption of Croatian citizens in catering and tourist facilities throughout Croatia.

Employers can pay up to HRK 2,500 of non-taxable income per year to their employees, and the tourist cardholder can cover their costs for using services and products within the tourist offer during the year. They can top up the card with their own money and use discounts.

The 'Vacation-Worthy Week' campaign, implemented by the Ministry of Tourism and Sports in cooperation with the Croatian National Tourist Board, will be delayed to the post-season, guided by the idea that the most important thing now is to contribute to a favorable epidemiological situation through responsible behavior to achieve the best possible results in the peak part of the tourist year, said the Ministry.

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March 22, 2021 - The 26th round of the Croatian First League was held from March 19 to 21, 2021. In this round, Dinamo defeats Gorica, Osijek is better than Lokomotiva, and Hajduk and Rijeka both record victories. 

Osijek v. Lokomotiva (2:0)

Osijek and Lokomotiva opened the 26th round on Friday, March 19, 2021, at City Garden Stadium. 

Kleinheisler scored Osijek's first goal in the 14th minute for the early lead and 1:0 at the half. Mierez increased Osijek's lead to 2:0 in the 79th minute for the final result. 

Osijek is currently in second place with 58 points, while Lokomotiva is in 10th place with 20 points. 

Slaven Belupo v. Istra 1961 (1:1)

Belupo and Istra met in Koprivnica on Saturday, March 20, 2021. 

Glavcic missed a penalty for Belupo in the 25th minute to keep the score 0:0. Ilicic made up for it with a goal two minutes later for 1:0 Belupo. An Istra penalty was awarded just before the half, which Grzan scored to equalize. The match ended 1:1. 

Belupo is currently in 7th place with 24 points, while Istra is in 8th with 24. 

Hajduk v. Sibenik (1:0)

Hajduk and Sibenik met at Poljud Stadium on Saturday, March 20, 2021. 

The only goal of the match came in the 72nd minute when junior Marin Ljubičić scored the winning goal in his championship debut for Hajduk. Sibenik's Alimi was given his second yellow in the 77th, forcing Sibenik to play with a man down for the remainder of the match. 

Hajduk is currently in 5th place with 36 points, while Sibenik is in 6th with 26. 

Rijeka v. Varazdin (2:0)

Rijeka and Varazdin met on Sunday, March 21, 2021, at Rujevica Stadium. 

Galovic scored two goals in the first half (22', 35') for the Rijeka lead and ultimate victory. 

Rijeka is currently in 4th place with 39 points, while Varazdin is in 9th with 22. 

Dinamo v. Gorica (1:0)

Dinamo and Gorica closed out the 26th round at Maksimir Stadium on March 21, 2021. 

While the first half went without goals, Petkovic scored for Dinamo to open the second half (1:0, 47'), which was the final result. 

Gorica's Joey Suk broke his leg in two places during the match (both lower leg bones) and went into surgery last night, Gorica confirmed on their Facebook page after the game.

Dinamo is currently in first place with 60 points, while Gorica is in 3rd with 48. 

You can see the full HNL table HERE.

To read more about sport in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

March the 22nd, 2021 - I didn't think I'd bother writing anything about the Zagreb earthquake which struck the city this time last year. It was what it was. What else is there to say? I thought in my typically emotionally reserved way. Zagreb earthquake memories are something that many people carry with them, probably in silence. I'm one of those silent people.

Such thoughts aside, as my friend and colleague Iva rightly said in her article, everyone living in Zagreb will have a memory of that horrible morning. It's always fascinating to me to think how much we as humans continue to live in total ignorance, believing that we are in constant and total control. If a global pandemic in which an organism one can't even see grinds the whole world to a halt wasn't enough to show us that isn't and will never, ever be true, a huge earthquake was a good additional reminder.

I was asleep at the time. It was early in the morning and the sound of Zagreb's trams and (often poorly maintained) tracks tend to cause somewhat loud noises. Living in the heart of Zagreb, one becomes used to loud noises, be they trams, rubbish trucks or indeed the odd car crash. The lockdown into which Croatia was plunged as the novel coronavirus found its way into the country rendered the Croatian capital unusually quiet, and the sounds to which I had become very accustomed had become somewhat less. It was pleasant.

Back then, before we had all become well and truly done with sometimes rather illogical anti-epidemic measures, horrible infection rate reports and intermittent lockdowns, that time was totally unprecedented and in some warped way, rather exciting. The then significantly quieter Zagreb was filled with other sounds, including birdsong as spring finally began to break through the harsh grip of a long, boring winter.

We didn't know back then what was to come throughout 2020 and those feelings and sense of naivity now feel so distant. But let's get back to the point - Zagreb earthquake memories.

I awoke to the sound of what I thought, in my half awake, half asleep state of consciousness, was a train heading at lightening speed towards my building. The sound was absolutely deafening, and I had never heard anything like it. It rattled towards my building, as if coming from a great distance, gaining momentum like a dangerous avalanche having formed from little more than a bit of harmless snow. It only took me a few seconds, maybe three at most, to realise that this was of course no train.

I looked up and saw the plaster on the walls of my apartment begin to crack, a long fault line appearing amid the calm creamy colour like something out of a film. Having grown up in Britain, a calm, favourably positioned country in regard to such natural events, I had only ever experienced two earthquakes, one I slept through and the other did little more than knock a lamp off my table. Traumatic indeed.

The deafening sound grew louder, and the crack got bigger, running along the wall as if dancing with the beat of that terrible sound. An earthquake. 

Car alarms began to sound and as I shot up out of bed as the building shook as if made from paper, people living on my street began running out of their buildings, out onto the streets as the police shouted at them for gathering together without masks during the pandemic dominated by a novel virus about which we knew very little back then.

You're not safe inside. You're not safe outside either. How on Earth has this happened? 2020 had barely begun and it was already looking Biblical. A plague, a disaster, were locusts and famine next on the list as a punishment? It sounds amusing now, but at the time, it was all so surreal it was difficult to know what to do or what to believe.

Worried faces filled the streets as the aftershocks rolled in and car alarms kept sounding as debris fell from Zagreb's shamefully neglected facades onto windshields, now cracked and coated with dust. The trams stopped. The police left. People returned indoors to inspect the damage to their homes and the birdsong suddenly became unpleasant. It was eerie.

As night fell, sleeping with that horrible sound in mind and the thoughts of the walls cracking so fresh and vivid wasn't easy. I'm not a particularly sensitive person, and I tend to let things roll off me, but that event was somehow so deeply disturbing that thoughts of packing an emergency exit bag and leaving it by the front door seemed appealing. Perhaps wrongly, I neglected to do that, and although some aftershocks did happen, such a move was thankfully not needed.

Zagreb's beautiful, iconic cathedral, apparently forever under some sort of construction, was damaged significantly. The very epicentre of the strong quake, just outside Zagreb, got little attention when compared to the heart of the city as politicians went out to the field to show their faces. The earthquake was a natural disaster which nobody could have predicted or indeed done a thing about even if they could, but it exposed some deep flaws about Zagreb's administration and the state of the city, as some parts of it are still dotted with rubble and warnings about potential falling debris one year later.

How the Zagreb earthquake memories, which every resident of this city has buried somewhere in the back of their minds, will reflect what will be done in the city's renovation process remains to be seen. With progress moving at Croatia's typically slow pace and astronomical figures being stated, it's difficult to imagine a Zagreb unscarred by this event, which I hope I'll never experience again.

For more on the Zagreb earthquake and Zagreb earthquake memories, check out our dedicated section.

ZAGREB, 19 March 2021 - Trawling by fishing fleets releases roughly the same amount of carbon emissions into the water as aviation puts into the atmosphere each year. Croatia is one of the ten countries in the world whose fleets release the most harmful gases.

In a study published in the journal Nature, a team of 26 scientists and conservationists said marine protected areas (MPAs) are an effective tool for restoring biodiversity, expanding seafood supplies, and storing climate-heating carbon.

But at present, only 7% of the ocean has been designated or proposed as an MPA, with less than 3% under full or high protection from fishing, mining, and other habitat destruction.

The study explored the benefits of boosting that share to at least 30%; a goal governments are being urged to adopt this year when they agree on new global targets to stop and reverse the damage humans are causing to nature, Reuters says.

Lead author Enric Sala, an "explorer-in-residence" at the National Geographic Society, said ocean life has declined worldwide because of overfishing, climate change, and marine habitats.

"It's clear that humanity and the economy will benefit from a healthier ocean. And we can realize those benefits quickly if countries work together to protect at least 30% of the ocean by 2030," he said in a statement.

Researchers calculated for the first time the climate impacts of bottom trawling, a fishing method that involves dragging heavy nets across the ocean floor, and found it produces one gigatonne of carbon emissions on average each year.

That exceeds all countries' annual emissions except China, the United States, India, Russia, and Japan.

Paper co-author Trisha Atwood of Utah State University said the "destructive" practice of trawling disturbs the seabed, releasing some of the carbon it contains, which is then broken down by microbes and turned into carbon dioxide (CO2).

It is still unclear how much of that CO2 finds its way from the sea into the air, contributing to warming the planet, she told Reuters.

But if it stays in the water, it contributes to the acidification that harms coral reefs and means the ocean can absorb less CO2 from the atmosphere.

The findings would make activities on the ocean's seabed "hard to ignore in climate plans going forward," she noted.

So far, governments have only started looking at how to value and maintain stores of carbon in coastal areas, such as in mangrove forests, let alone in the ocean itself.

Adriatic needs protection

But the study said eliminating 90% of the risk of carbon disturbance due to bottom trawling would require banning industrial fishing in only 3.6% of the ocean, mostly within the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) that stretch 200 nautical miles (370 km) from countries' shores.

Countries with the highest potential to curb emissions by protecting ocean carbon stocks are those with large EEZs and industrial bottom-trawl fisheries, it added.

Data showed the nations with the highest emissions from bottom trawling are China, responsible for about three-quarters of the total, followed by Russia, Italy, Britain, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Croatia, and Spain.

Areas where greater protection could cut carbon emissions, and boost marine biodiversity and food supplies, include the China Sea, the North Sea, and the Adriatic, Atwood noted.

The researchers said reducing CO2 emissions by cutting back on trawling could generate carbon credits and provide "a meaningful opportunity" to fund the creation of more marine protected areas while compensating for economic losses, Reuters says.

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March 21, 2021 - Every single person living in Zagreb can tell you their story of the potres of 2020. Here's mine, told through the lens of one building, on the corner of Đorđićeva and Petrinjska street.

Most people never want to live through a big earthquake. But, the thing you even more don't want to live through is an earthquake waking you up at 6:24, in your bed in a city of just under a million people, during the early days of a lockdown imposed because of the pandemic. Pandemic, mind you, of a brand new disease, one caused by the virus we know almost nothing about.

And that is exactly where we found ourselves on the morning of March 22nd, 2020. Now, that's not the first earthquake I've felt in my life, which was mostly spent in Zagreb. I remember one, back when I was a kid, sometime before the Homeland War of '91, when we all ran out to the streets as well. It wasn't nearly as bad as this one, but it was something I felt and remembered. Our region has seen much worse, with towns destroyed by the tectonic plates and their restlessness. But, the really big ones, we told ourselves, those happened in California or Japan!

The one that woke us up on the morning of March 22nd 2020 objectively wasn't a big one. I mean, it only took us 9 months to feel an even bigger one. But the one from March was scary because we were already scared. Scared of the virus, scared of the pandemic, scared of the reactions to the pandemic, scared of the unclear future. (As if the future is ever really clear)

Then, rapidly, one after another, many things happened: another earthquake half an hour later, we heard the news of one casualty, we saw that the top of the Zagreb Cathedral tower was gone, movement of people within Croatia was restricted and a symbol of the devastation of Zagreb became apparent. I don't know the order in which these events occurred; those days honestly feel like a blur now.

The building which turned into a symbol is not the one you'd expect, it's not the Cathedral. It's just an ordinary downtown building, located on the corner of Petrinjska and Đorđićeva streets. The only thing worth noticing about that building was the street art it had on its side. And, on March 22nd, what it looked like:

The only casualty of the earthquake was a child who died in Đorđićeva street. The Croatian media has repeatedly told us that the tragic event did not happen in this building. The building and its street art and the open sides were a whole different story.

We went through a lot since, the people and the city. There was a lot of clean-up in the immediate aftermath, still worried about the pandemic taking off insanely with the people spending so much time in close proximity (it didn't); the top of the second tower of the Zagreb cathedral coming down, feeling good about how we handled the pandemic during the spring, the parliamentary elections, the tourist season, feeling extremely bad about how we handled the pandemic during the late summer and the autumn, and then the heart-breaking earthquakes in the Petrinja region in the final days of last year. (A not-so-fun fact: if you're wondering if Petrinjska Street in Zagreb is named after the same Petrinja which was destroyed in the earthquakes: yes, it is)

In early 2021, as we were approaching the first anniversary of the Zagreb earthquakes, I needed to go to the city centre, and by chance, going by this building up the Petrinjska Street was the route I took. It's not like I haven't been there before, since the quake, it's just that I thought... something has happened. And then I saw it and I literally gasped. I wasn't even composed enough to take a photo of it, but this photo is what the building and the corner it's on look like today: 

Fenced off, traffic not allowed through Đorđićeva at all, pedestrians not allowed anywhere near, with pieces of brick and roof tiles scattered around the building - as if the earthquake was a couple of days ago, and not a year ago!

Surprisingly, although 2020 was among the longest years of our lives, sometimes it does feel like the earthquake only just happened. So much of the city is still damaged, and the pandemic is making it harder to even figure out what is destroyed, lost, needs to be fixed or replaced - as we're not going to the city centre as much as we used to. 2020 seemed to last forever, but it lasting forever hasn't helped my hometown heal. Maybe 2021 will bring a new breath of optimism to the streets (and lives) that still need a lot of help.

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ZAGREB, 21 March 2021 - After not taking place last year, the biggest international flower show in this part of Europe, Floraart, is scheduled to take place at Zagreb's Bundek lake on 10-16 May, the organizer has announced.

The 55th Floraart will feature more than 200 exhibitors and the exhibition area will spread over 300,000 square meters. All coronavirus measures will have to be complied with.

"Unless the coronavirus situation deteriorates significantly, Floraart will not be that much different than in previous years," Floraart said.

The fair is organized by the Zagreb Holding utility conglomerate in cooperation with the city.

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ZAGREB, 21 March 2021 - At the end of February this year, 233,736 consumers in Croatia were subjected to debt enforcement proceedings for HRK 16.9 billion owed, as were 15,504 business operators owing HRK 15 billion, according to the data from the Financial Agency (FINA).

The number of consumers in debt fell by 6,151 or 2.6% compared with February 2020, while their debt principal increased by HRK 100 million or 0.9% to HRK 16.9 billion.

The majority of consumers, or 103,050, owed less than HRK 10,000, while 100,904 consumers owed amounts ranging between HRK 10,000 and 100,000. On the other hand, the smallest number of consumers, i.e. 1,537, owed more than HRK 1 million, and their share in the total debt was 38.48%.

The bulk of consumers' debt, HRK 5.1 billion without interest, accounted for debt to banks as creditors, while debt to all financial institutions totalled HRK 5.9 billion.

The number of business operators in debt declined by 2,619 or 14.5% compared with February 2020. Their debt principal amounted to HRK 5 billion, down by HRK 730.9 million or 12.7%.

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ZAGREB, 21 March 2021 - The parliamentary Croatian People's Party (HNS) on Sunday presented its candidate for Osijek mayor, the head of the party's branch in that eastern Slavonian city and former deputy mayor, Vladimir Ham.

HNS leader Stjepan Čuraj said Ham knew how the city operated and how concrete political initiatives at the local level were shaped as well as that he was a deputy mayor during the first term of Mayor Ivan Vrkić, when numerous projects were launched.

Ham said that he wanted to open Osijek to young people "because we can see that the city has been developing in an entirely new direction, including IT industry. We do not want to build factories but rather create conditions for people with ideas, who want to work and know exactly what they are doing," Ham said, among other things.

Local elections are to be held on May 16.

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