Country-wide policy
A Certificate From One Ministry Opens a Residence Permit, a Work Exemption, Permanent Residence and a Place on the Croatian Side of the Employer Ratio
Since 15 March 2025 a single document issued by the ministry competent for demography and emigration does four separate jobs in Croatian immigration law, and the Zakon o strancima does not say what it takes to obtain one. It proves entitlement to temporary residence for the immigration and return of the Croatian emigrant community under article 79.a, which carries no means test and no insurance test. It lets the holder be employed or self-employed with no residence and work permit. After three continuous years it opens permanent residence under article 156(1) point 2. And since 4 June 2026 it does something for the holder's employer as well: article 99(13) counts the holder among the employer's Croatian workers for the ratio that decides whether anybody else can be hired from outside the Union. The statute names the ministry, names the four classes of person the certificate may describe - an emigrant, a family member, a descendant, a family member of a descendant - and leaves everything else to administration.
Topics it changes
What it requires
- A certificate of the ministry competent for demography and emigration
- Nothing else stated in the Zakon o strancima for the residence itself, besides the general conditions of article 59 less means and insurance
At a glance
- What the certificate must say
- That you are a Croatian emigrant, a family member of one, a descendant of one, or a family member of a descendant
Article 79.a(1) of the Zakon o strancima, added by article 19 of NN 40/2025.
- What the Act says about obtaining it
- Nothing - article 79.a names the ministry and states no condition
Article 79.a was read in article 19 of NN 40/2025 and no evidential requirement appears there or anywhere else in the Act.
- To permanent residence
- 3 continuous years
Article 156(1) point 2 of the Zakon o strancima as substituted by article 31 of NN 40/2025.
- Effect on the employer's ratio
- Counted as a Croatian worker
Article 99(13) of the Zakon o strancima as substituted by article 26 of NN 55/2026.
What the law says
«(1) Privremeni boravak u svrhu useljavanja i povratka hrvatskog iseljeništva može se odobriti državljaninu treće zemlje koji je hrvatski iseljenik, član obitelji hrvatskog iseljenika, potomak hrvatskog iseljenika ili član obitelji potomka hrvatskog iseljenika, što dokazuje potvrdom ministarstva nadležnog za demografiju i useljeništvo.»Our translation - not official
(1) Temporary residence for the purpose of the immigration and return of the Croatian emigrant community may be granted to a third-country national who is a Croatian emigrant, a family member of a Croatian emigrant, a descendant of a Croatian emigrant or a family member of a descendant of a Croatian emigrant, which he proves by a certificate of the ministry competent for demography and emigration.
The certificate, and the only test the Act states.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Croatia's official gazette, at narodne-novine.nn.hr. An act takes legal effect on publication here and carries the gazette's issue number and date as part of its identity - the Zakon o strancima is NN 133/2020 and nothing else. Every item since 1990 is addressable twice: as /clanci/sluzbeni/<year>_<month>_<issue>_<seq>.html, and, for anything published since about 2016, by ELI at /eli/sluzbeni/<year>/<issue>/<seq>, which answers a 302 to the first form. The ELI-era pages also carry RDFa in the head: eli#amended_by and eli#changed_by list every amending act of a statute, which is how the amendment chain of a recent act is established rather than guessed. Items published before ELI - the Zakon o hrvatskom državljanstvu of 1991 among them - carry no metadata at all. The site serves plain HTTP to an ordinary client with no proxy and no warm-up. Its search form is ASP.NET and needs a POST with viewstate, but the complete yearly register is downloadable without one: /get_index_file.aspx?year=<YYYY>&type=csv returns every item of that year as tab-separated title, document type, issuing body and link, and 1990 to 2026 is 22 MB. That register is what makes a negative answer about an amendment possible.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: **It publishes acts as enacted and does not consolidate them.** There is no consolidated text of any Croatian statute on this site. The whole gazette has carried 222 items with 'pročišćeni tekst' in the title since 1990, and since 2016 they are statutes of professional chambers, party statutes and collective agreements; the last consolidated text of an Act was the Zakon o državnim službenicima in 2012. So what is read here is the act as published plus each amending act, and an article number quoted from an amending act is an instruction to amend rather than an article of the resulting law - it must be cited as the article of the amended Act, naming what put it there. A consequence worth stating plainly: because nothing on this site is a consolidation, no citation of it carries a consolidation cut-off, and an apparently current article may have been replaced by a later amending act published in a different issue. The register at /get_index_file.aspx is title-indexed, so an amending act whose title does not name the statute it amends will not be found by searching it. The gazette cannot be cited for anything it does not publish: the shortage-occupation decision under article 101(1) of the Zakon o strancima is made by the Employment Service's governing council and does not appear here, nor does the evidence the ministry competent for demography and emigration requires for the certificate on which the whole diaspora residence route turns, nor the average monthly net salary that every means threshold in Croatian immigration law is a fraction of, which the state statistics office publishes separately. zakon.hr and informator.hr carry consolidated Croatian texts and are commercial publishers, not government ones; they are not cited here.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«neposredno prije podnošenja zahtjeva imao neprekidno tri godine odobren privremeni boravak u svrhu useljavanja i povratka hrvatskog iseljeništva uz potvrdu ministarstva nadležnog za demografiju i useljeništvo»Our translation - not official
immediately before lodging the application had three years of continuous approved temporary residence for the purpose of the immigration and return of the Croatian emigrant community, with a certificate of the ministry competent for demography and emigration
The same certificate again, three years later.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Croatia's official gazette, at narodne-novine.nn.hr. An act takes legal effect on publication here and carries the gazette's issue number and date as part of its identity - the Zakon o strancima is NN 133/2020 and nothing else. Every item since 1990 is addressable twice: as /clanci/sluzbeni/<year>_<month>_<issue>_<seq>.html, and, for anything published since about 2016, by ELI at /eli/sluzbeni/<year>/<issue>/<seq>, which answers a 302 to the first form. The ELI-era pages also carry RDFa in the head: eli#amended_by and eli#changed_by list every amending act of a statute, which is how the amendment chain of a recent act is established rather than guessed. Items published before ELI - the Zakon o hrvatskom državljanstvu of 1991 among them - carry no metadata at all. The site serves plain HTTP to an ordinary client with no proxy and no warm-up. Its search form is ASP.NET and needs a POST with viewstate, but the complete yearly register is downloadable without one: /get_index_file.aspx?year=<YYYY>&type=csv returns every item of that year as tab-separated title, document type, issuing body and link, and 1990 to 2026 is 22 MB. That register is what makes a negative answer about an amendment possible.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: **It publishes acts as enacted and does not consolidate them.** There is no consolidated text of any Croatian statute on this site. The whole gazette has carried 222 items with 'pročišćeni tekst' in the title since 1990, and since 2016 they are statutes of professional chambers, party statutes and collective agreements; the last consolidated text of an Act was the Zakon o državnim službenicima in 2012. So what is read here is the act as published plus each amending act, and an article number quoted from an amending act is an instruction to amend rather than an article of the resulting law - it must be cited as the article of the amended Act, naming what put it there. A consequence worth stating plainly: because nothing on this site is a consolidation, no citation of it carries a consolidation cut-off, and an apparently current article may have been replaced by a later amending act published in a different issue. The register at /get_index_file.aspx is title-indexed, so an amending act whose title does not name the statute it amends will not be found by searching it. The gazette cannot be cited for anything it does not publish: the shortage-occupation decision under article 101(1) of the Zakon o strancima is made by the Employment Service's governing council and does not appear here, nor does the evidence the ministry competent for demography and emigration requires for the certificate on which the whole diaspora residence route turns, nor the average monthly net salary that every means threshold in Croatian immigration law is a fraction of, which the state statistics office publishes separately. zakon.hr and informator.hr carry consolidated Croatian texts and are commercial publishers, not government ones; they are not cited here.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«(13) U broj zaposlenih radnika državljana Republike Hrvatske iz stavka 1. točke 4. te stavaka 2., 11. i 12. ovoga članka uračunavaju se i hrvatski iseljenici, članovi obitelji hrvatskog iseljenika, potomci hrvatskog iseljenika i članovi obitelji potomka hrvatskog iseljenika kojima je na temelju potvrde ministarstva nadležnog za demografiju i useljeništvo odobren privremeni boravak u svrhu useljavanja i povratka hrvatskog iseljeništva ili odobren stalni boravak na temelju članka 156. stavka 1. točke 2. ovoga Zakona.»Our translation - not official
(13) Croatian emigrants, family members of a Croatian emigrant, descendants of a Croatian emigrant and family members of a descendant of a Croatian emigrant who, on the basis of a certificate of the ministry competent for demography and emigration, have been granted temporary residence for the purpose of the immigration and return of the Croatian emigrant community or permanent residence on the basis of article 156(1) point 2 of this Act shall also be counted in the number of employed workers who are nationals of the Republic of Croatia under paragraph 1 point 4 and paragraphs 2, 11 and 12 of this article.
The fourth use, and the one nobody applying for the permit would look for.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Croatia's official gazette, at narodne-novine.nn.hr. An act takes legal effect on publication here and carries the gazette's issue number and date as part of its identity - the Zakon o strancima is NN 133/2020 and nothing else. Every item since 1990 is addressable twice: as /clanci/sluzbeni/<year>_<month>_<issue>_<seq>.html, and, for anything published since about 2016, by ELI at /eli/sluzbeni/<year>/<issue>/<seq>, which answers a 302 to the first form. The ELI-era pages also carry RDFa in the head: eli#amended_by and eli#changed_by list every amending act of a statute, which is how the amendment chain of a recent act is established rather than guessed. Items published before ELI - the Zakon o hrvatskom državljanstvu of 1991 among them - carry no metadata at all. The site serves plain HTTP to an ordinary client with no proxy and no warm-up. Its search form is ASP.NET and needs a POST with viewstate, but the complete yearly register is downloadable without one: /get_index_file.aspx?year=<YYYY>&type=csv returns every item of that year as tab-separated title, document type, issuing body and link, and 1990 to 2026 is 22 MB. That register is what makes a negative answer about an amendment possible.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: **It publishes acts as enacted and does not consolidate them.** There is no consolidated text of any Croatian statute on this site. The whole gazette has carried 222 items with 'pročišćeni tekst' in the title since 1990, and since 2016 they are statutes of professional chambers, party statutes and collective agreements; the last consolidated text of an Act was the Zakon o državnim službenicima in 2012. So what is read here is the act as published plus each amending act, and an article number quoted from an amending act is an instruction to amend rather than an article of the resulting law - it must be cited as the article of the amended Act, naming what put it there. A consequence worth stating plainly: because nothing on this site is a consolidation, no citation of it carries a consolidation cut-off, and an apparently current article may have been replaced by a later amending act published in a different issue. The register at /get_index_file.aspx is title-indexed, so an amending act whose title does not name the statute it amends will not be found by searching it. The gazette cannot be cited for anything it does not publish: the shortage-occupation decision under article 101(1) of the Zakon o strancima is made by the Employment Service's governing council and does not appear here, nor does the evidence the ministry competent for demography and emigration requires for the certificate on which the whole diaspora residence route turns, nor the average monthly net salary that every means threshold in Croatian immigration law is a fraction of, which the state statistics office publishes separately. zakon.hr and informator.hr carry consolidated Croatian texts and are commercial publishers, not government ones; they are not cited here.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
Practical notes
What the ministry asks for, how far a descendant may reach and whether a date of emigration matters are not answered by anything read here. The statute delegates all of it.
The citizenship route for the same families is older, narrower and in a different statute: article 11 of the Zakon o hrvatskom državljanstvu defines the emigrant as someone who left before 8 October 1991 and excludes anyone who moved within the former Yugoslavia. The immigration statute uses neither limit.
Article 156(1) point 2 replaced a provision for a person of Croatian ethnicity who had returned intending to live permanently in Croatia and held three years of temporary residence, proved by a certificate of the body competent for relations with Croats outside Croatia. The class and the issuing body both changed in 2025.