Council of the EU Updates "Safe List"; USA and Serbia Included!

June 26, 2021 - Extremely important travel update to the EU "Safe List" seems to have gone almost completely unreported: as of June 18th, 2021, the citizens of several countries, including the United States of America and Serbia, are allowed to enter the EU without any limitations!

The new "list of countries... for which travel restrictions should be lifted", published by the Council of the European Union now includes Albania, Australia, Israel, Japan, Lebanon, New Zealand, Republic of North Macedonia, Rwanda, Serbia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, the United States of America, and China (subject to confirmation of reciprocity). The Croatian Ministry of the Interior included this recommendation for the expansion of the safe list in their official documents regulating entry into Croatia. We also have unofficial confirmation that the changes are already being implemented on Croatian borders.

What exactly does that mean? Croatian police explain it quite nicely: "... can travel to the Republic of Croatia without restrictions and they will not be asked to present a test or vaccination certificates, proof of having recovered from the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, nor will they be obliged to self-isolate... The aforementioned persons, who transited through other countries/regions to the border crossings of the Republic of Croatia without delays need to prove at the border crossing point that they did not stay in the transit areas."

So, those traveling from neighbouring countries  and countries in the region will need to show that they just transited through the territories which are not on the list (notably, for Croatia, those are Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro). For those traveling from further away, such as the United States of America, Japan, Australia or New Zealand, they will also need to make sure their transits in various European airports were as short as possible, or that they are transiting at the airports which are also in the EU "green zones".

This is amazing news for Croatian (and European) tourism!

For a more detailed overview of rules on entering Croatia during the COVID-19 pandemic, check out our guide on Total Croatia.