Three Months on an Identity Card, and Then a Document Rather Than a Permit
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Croatia on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.
154 exceptions recorded across 56 countries · none match Croatia to Bulgaria · Residency under a regional treaty
Union, EEA and Swiss nationals are outside the Aliens Act entirely. Their position is governed by a separate statute, the Zakon za vlizaneto, prebivavaneto i napuskaneto na Republika Balgariya na grazhdanite na Evropeyskiya sayuz i chlenovete na tehnite semeystva, which transposes Directive 2004/38. Article 6(1) gives a Union citizen three months on a valid identity card or passport, with no formality at all; a family member who is not a Union citizen gets the same three months on a passport. Beyond that, article 8(1) issues a document of continuing residence - a certificate of a right, not a permit granted at discretion - to a Union citizen who is a worker or self-employed here, or who has health insurance and sufficient means not to burden the social assistance system, or who is enrolled in education and also meets the means condition. Article 8(3) keeps the status of worker for someone who has stopped working through illness, accident, involuntary unemployment after more than a year's work, or retraining. Permanent residence follows five continuous years of lawful residence under article 16(1), with four shorter routes for people who reach pension age, lose working capacity, or work across a border.
At a glance
- Stay with no formality
- Three months on an identity card or passport
Article 6(1) of the Act on the entry, residence and departure of Union citizens and their family members.
- Continuing residence
- A document issued on work, self-employment, study, or means and insurance
Article 8(1) of that Act.
- Permanent residence
- 5 years of continuous lawful residence
Article 16(1), which also gives four shorter routes tied to pension age, incapacity and cross-border work.
- Means figure for a Union citizen
- None in article 8(1) of that Act, which asks for sufficient means not to burden the social assistance system and states no amount
The Aliens Act's own scale - the minimum monthly wage, stipend or pension - is in a different statute and does not apply here.
Requirements
- A valid identity card or passport for the first three months
- Work, self-employment, study, or means and health insurance, for continuing residence
- Five continuous years of lawful residence for the permanent document
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Croatia
We have no rule recorded that treats your citizenship differently here, so the general rule above is the one that applies to you. That is an answer, not a gap.
What the law says
«Гражданин на Европейския съюз пребивава в Република България с валидна лична карта или валиден паспорт за срок до три месеца.»Our translation - not official
A citizen of the European Union resides in the Republic of Bulgaria on a valid identity card or a valid passport for a period of up to three months.
About this source
The interior ministry's migration directorate, which decides every residence permit in Bulgaria and keeps a page of the legislation it applies at /migration/дирекцията/нормативна-уредба/bgzac. The files behind it are prints generated by the commercial system Сиела and are the most current texts of the Aliens Act, its implementing regulation and the Act on Union citizens that any Bulgarian public body publishes.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: The files are vendor prints, not official texts, and the vendor's watermark is injected into the running text where it interrupts sentences mid-clause. Worse, the directorate's server returns 403 to a direct download, so the only way in is the extraction service, which reads these PDFs as two columns and interleaves the words of long paragraphs: article 23(5)-(6) of the Aliens Act and article 16(3) of the Act on Union citizens both come back scrambled. Nothing may be quoted from this publisher without reading the sentence back in Bulgarian first. Its own HTML service pages, which describe procedures, were unreachable by every tool.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source
«Документът за продължително пребиваване се издава на гражданин на Европейския съюз, който отговоря на едно от следните условия: 1. работник е или е самостоятелно заето лице в Република България; 2. (изм.-ДВ, бр. 9 от 2011 г.) притежава здравна осигуровка и необходимите финансови средства за покриване на разходите по пребиваването си и тези на членовете на семейството му, без да са в тежест на системата за социално подпомагане; 3. записан е в учебно заведение за обучение, включително и професионално обучение, и отговаря на условията по т. 2.»Three conditions, any one of which is enough. The publisher's print carries the typo отговоря for отговаря and it is reproduced.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The interior ministry's migration directorate, which decides every residence permit in Bulgaria and keeps a page of the legislation it applies at /migration/дирекцията/нормативна-уредба/bgzac. The files behind it are prints generated by the commercial system Сиела and are the most current texts of the Aliens Act, its implementing regulation and the Act on Union citizens that any Bulgarian public body publishes.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: The files are vendor prints, not official texts, and the vendor's watermark is injected into the running text where it interrupts sentences mid-clause. Worse, the directorate's server returns 403 to a direct download, so the only way in is the extraction service, which reads these PDFs as two columns and interleaves the words of long paragraphs: article 23(5)-(6) of the Aliens Act and article 16(3) of the Act on Union citizens both come back scrambled. Nothing may be quoted from this publisher without reading the sentence back in Bulgarian first. Its own HTML service pages, which describe procedures, were unreachable by every tool.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source
«Гражданин на Европейския съюз или член на семейството му, който е гражданин на Европейския съюз, или член на семейството на български гражданин, който е гражданин на Европейския съюз и е упражнил правото си на свободно движение, получава документ за постоянно пребиваване, ако законно е пребивавал непрекъснато в продължение на пет години в Република България или ако отговаря на едно от следните условия:»Five years, or one of four shorter routes set out in the points that follow.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The interior ministry's migration directorate, which decides every residence permit in Bulgaria and keeps a page of the legislation it applies at /migration/дирекцията/нормативна-уредба/bgzac. The files behind it are prints generated by the commercial system Сиела and are the most current texts of the Aliens Act, its implementing regulation and the Act on Union citizens that any Bulgarian public body publishes.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: The files are vendor prints, not official texts, and the vendor's watermark is injected into the running text where it interrupts sentences mid-clause. Worse, the directorate's server returns 403 to a direct download, so the only way in is the extraction service, which reads these PDFs as two columns and interleaves the words of long paragraphs: article 23(5)-(6) of the Aliens Act and article 16(3) of the Act on Union citizens both come back scrambled. Nothing may be quoted from this publisher without reading the sentence back in Bulgarian first. Its own HTML service pages, which describe procedures, were unreachable by every tool.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source
Practical notes
This record is Bulgaria's transposition of Directive 2004/38 and not the Directive itself, which was not read here.
The Ministry of the Interior's own print of this Act carries a scrambled passage at article 16(3), where the words of two columns have been interleaved. Nothing is quoted from that paragraph.
- administersЗакон за влизането, пребиваването и напускането на Република България на гражданите на Европейския съюз и членовете на техните семейства, consolidated text to ДВ бр. 52 от 2025 г.
Министерство на вътрешните работи, дирекция "Миграция"
About this source
The interior ministry's migration directorate, which decides every residence permit in Bulgaria and keeps a page of the legislation it applies at /migration/дирекцията/нормативна-уредба/bgzac. The files behind it are prints generated by the commercial system Сиела and are the most current texts of the Aliens Act, its implementing regulation and the Act on Union citizens that any Bulgarian public body publishes.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: The files are vendor prints, not official texts, and the vendor's watermark is injected into the running text where it interrupts sentences mid-clause. Worse, the directorate's server returns 403 to a direct download, so the only way in is the extraction service, which reads these PDFs as two columns and interleaves the words of long paragraphs: article 23(5)-(6) of the Aliens Act and article 16(3) of the Act on Union citizens both come back scrambled. Nothing may be quoted from this publisher without reading the sentence back in Bulgarian first. Its own HTML service pages, which describe procedures, were unreachable by every tool.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source
- administersБългарско законодателство, Дирекция "Миграция", Министерство на вътрешните работи
Министерство на вътрешните работи, дирекция "Миграция"
About this source
The interior ministry's migration directorate, which decides every residence permit in Bulgaria and keeps a page of the legislation it applies at /migration/дирекцията/нормативна-уредба/bgzac. The files behind it are prints generated by the commercial system Сиела and are the most current texts of the Aliens Act, its implementing regulation and the Act on Union citizens that any Bulgarian public body publishes.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: The files are vendor prints, not official texts, and the vendor's watermark is injected into the running text where it interrupts sentences mid-clause. Worse, the directorate's server returns 403 to a direct download, so the only way in is the extraction service, which reads these PDFs as two columns and interleaves the words of long paragraphs: article 23(5)-(6) of the Aliens Act and article 16(3) of the Act on Union citizens both come back scrambled. Nothing may be quoted from this publisher without reading the sentence back in Bulgarian first. Its own HTML service pages, which describe procedures, were unreachable by every tool.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source