Fifty-One Per Cent of a Croatian Company Gets You Past the Labour Market Test, and Not One Article Prices the Investment
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Chile 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 Chile to Croatia · Residency through investment
Croatia has no investor visa in the sense of a sum of money bought for a permit. What it has is a list of thirty-two exemptions in article 110 of the Zakon o strancima, and three of them are about owning or running a business: key personnel in a company, branch or representative office; self-employment in a company or a trade in which the applicant holds at least 51 per cent; and work on a strategic investment project or under the investment incentives law. Each of those gets a residence and work permit without a labour market test and without the Croatian Employment Service opinion that decides an ordinary work application - which is to say it escapes the employer tests in article 99 entirely. Article 115 sets the conditions for the strategic-investment permit and gives it a fifteen-day decision deadline, the only deadline of its kind in the chapter. Article 111 asks for an employment contract and proof of an educational qualification, and excuses a person self-employing in their own trade from the contract. Since NN 55/2026 the Act also closes a gap from the other direction: a third-country national who is the only person registered to manage and represent a company must apply for a permit within 30 days of being entered in the court register.
At a glance
- Shareholding for the self-employment permit
- At least 51 per cent
Article 110 point 3 of the Zakon o strancima, in a company or in a trade.
- Capital or investment threshold
- None in articles 110, 111 or 115 of the Zakon o strancima, which name no sum at all
Articles 110, 111, 112 and 115 were read in the 2020 Act and against all four amending acts. The strategic investment and investment incentive laws they defer to have not been read and may price the project itself.
- Labour market test
- Not carried out for any of these three categories
Article 110 of the Zakon o strancima excuses its whole list from the test in article 98 and the opinion in article 99.
- Decision deadline on a strategic investment permit
- 15 days from a complete application
Article 115(2) of the Zakon o strancima.
- Employment contract
- Not required where you self-employ in your own trade
Article 111(4) of the Zakon o strancima.
- Deadline for a sole company director
- 30 days from entry in the court register
Article 111(5) of the Zakon o strancima, added by article 38 of NN 55/2026.
Requirements
- A holding of at least 51 per cent in a Croatian company or trade, for the self-employment route
- Or key personnel duties under article 112, or a strategic investment project or investment incentive
- Proof of an educational qualification, and an employment contract except where self-employing in your own trade
- The general conditions of article 59
- Where you are the sole registered manager of a company, an application within 30 days of entry in the court register
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Chile
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
«Bez provedbe testa tržišta rada iz članka 98. ovoga Zakona i bez mišljenja područne službe odnosno ureda Hrvatskog zavoda za zapošljavanje iz članka 99. ovoga Zakona, a na zahtjev državljanina treće zemlje ili poslodavca, Ministarstvo, putem policijske uprave odnosno policijske postaje, može izdati dozvolu za boravak i rad:»Our translation - not official
Without carrying out the labour market test under article 98 of this Act and without the opinion of the regional service or office of the Croatian Employment Service under article 99 of this Act, at the request of the third-country national or of the employer, the Ministry may, through the police administration or police station, issue a residence and work permit:
The gate the whole list walks past. NN 40/2025 deleted the words naming the regional service, leaving the Service itself.
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
«državljaninu treće zemlje radi samozapošljavanja u trgovačkom društvu u kojem ima vlasnički udio najmanje 51 % ili u obrtu u kojem ima vlasnički udio najmanje 51 %»Our translation - not official
a third-country national for the purpose of self-employment in a company in which he holds an ownership share of at least 51 % or in a trade in which he holds an ownership share of at least 51 %
The nearest thing Croatia has to an investor route, expressed as a share rather than as a sum.
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
«(4) Državljanin treće zemlje koji se samozapošljava u vlastitom obrtu, uz zahtjev za izdavanje dozvole za boravak i rad, nije dužan priložiti dokaz iz stavka 1. točke 1. ovoga članka.»Our translation - not official
(4) A third-country national who self-employs in his own trade is not obliged to attach the proof under paragraph 1 point 1 of this article to the application for the issue of a residence and work permit.
The contract is excused; the educational qualification in point 2 is not.
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
«u trgovačkom društvu obavlja ključne poslove sukladno članku 112. ovoga Zakona ili u tom trgovačkom društvu ima vlasnički udio od najmanje 51 %, a trgovačko društvo je nositelj poticajnih mjera sukladno propisu o poticanju ulaganja ili provodi strateške investicijske projekte sukladno propisu o strateškim investicijskim projektima Republike Hrvatske»Our translation - not official
he performs key duties in the company in accordance with article 112 of this Act or holds an ownership share of at least 51 % in that company, and the company is the holder of incentive measures under the regulation on the promotion of investment or is implementing strategic investment projects under the regulation on strategic investment projects of the Republic of Croatia
The strategic investment permit, which rests on two other statutes this record does not read.
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
«»(5) U trgovačkom društvu u kojem je kao jedina osoba ovlaštena za vođenje i zastupanje društva upisan državljanin treće zemlje odnosno u trgovačkom društvu su kao osobe ovlaštene za vođenje i zastupanje društva upisani samo državljani treće zemlje, tada je taj jedini upisani državljanin treće zemlje odnosno barem jedan od više upisanih državljana trećih zemalja dužan u roku od 30 dana od dana upisa u sudski registar društva ili promjene osoba ovlaštenih za vođenje i zastupanje društva podnijeti zahtjev za izdavanje dozvole za boravak i rad sukladno članku 58. stavku 1. ili 2. i članku 110. točki 2. ovoga Zakona.»Our translation - not official
(5) Where a third-country national is entered as the only person authorised to manage and represent a company, or where only third-country nationals are entered as the persons authorised to manage and represent a company, that sole entered third-country national or at least one of the several entered third-country nationals is obliged, within 30 days of the day of entry in the court register of the company or of a change in the persons authorised to manage and represent it, to lodge an application for the issue of a residence and work permit in accordance with article 58(1) or (2) and article 110 point 2 of this Act.
Registering a Croatian company is not work under article 88(2), but running one is, and since 4 June 2026 the Act puts a clock on it.
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
Narodne novine publishes acts as they were passed and does not consolidate them, so the current text of the Zakon o strancima is the 2020 Act read together with the amending acts of NN 114/2022, NN 151/2022, NN 40/2025 and NN 55/2026. Every article cited here was checked against all four.
The two statutes article 115 defers to - the law on the promotion of investment and the law on strategic investment projects of the Republic of Croatia - have not been read, and either of them may set a monetary threshold for the project. The absence recorded above is an absence from the Zakon o strancima only.
Article 88(2) says that the preliminary steps of founding and registering a company or trade are not work, so they may be taken before a permit exists. Article 111(5) is what now limits how long that can last.
Croatia has no citizenship-by-investment route: article 12 of the Zakon o hrvatskom državljanstvu lets a foreigner whose admission to Croatian citizenship would be in the interest of the Republic naturalise without meeting the conditions in article 8(1) points 1 to 4, and since NN 102/2019 the spouse of such a person must have lived in Croatia with approved residence for a year. The provision names no money and is not an investment route.
- issuesNN 133/2020, Zakon o strancima
Narodne novine
About 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
- issuesNN 55/2026, Zakon o izmjenama i dopunama Zakona o strancima
Narodne novine
About 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