Checking on the Croatian citizenship application status before MUP



You have applied for Croatian citizenship at the competent consulate, months (and years) have passed, but the decision regarding your request has not yet arrived?

You are undoubtedly wondering if there is an issue and whether you can take any action regarding this matter, as more and more questions of this nature arise daily. We will do our best to provide you with adequate answers.

The return of Croatian emigrants and their descendants to the homeland, according to the Croatian Demographic Revitalization Strategy by 2033, should be a priority of migration policy. However, when it comes to citizenship procedures, in practice, this is slow and inefficient, primarily due to the reasons set up hereunder:

• Applications from the Consulates around the world are sent via diplomatic mail to the relevant department for foreigners, where they are sorted, assigned a reference number, and designated a case handler, which can take several months (Your application is not immediately forwarded after the appointment),
• The number of officials handling administrative procedures for Croatian citizenship applications is, to put it mildly, modest when compared to the number of applications received annually from all around the world,
• The overall inefficiency of the administrative system,
• The mandatory verification of the submitted documentation and whether any factors on the applicant's side could raise concerns regarding national security,
• Instructions for prioritising emigrants from Latin America due to their difficult financial circumstances and living conditions, with the aim of permanent relocation to Croatia.

The legal requirements for the admission of descendants of emigrants under Article 11 are exceptionally favourable, and in some respects, even discriminatory towards other potential applicants. As an example, the spouse of a descendant of an emigrant, such as from the USA, does not need to have regularised residence in the Republic of Croatia, whereas the spouses of foreign nationals of current Croatian citizens, who have acquired Croatian citizenship through other grounds, must meet the prerequisite of having resided in Croatia for a period of up to four years before they can submit an application.

Therefore, given that Croatia currently applies the most favourable legal framework for descendants of emigrants in the entire European Union, it is not surprising that we find ourselves in a situation of an 'administrative bottleneck'.

It is important to note that the usual expected time frame for processing requests from abroad has been 12 to 18 months. Of course, we have also witnessed certain deviations, especially when the official handling the request insisted on clarification of the submitted documentation or required the submission of new documents.

The factor currently significantly hindering the process and effectively leading to the procedure taking longer than three years is prioritizing the processing of applications from Latin American applicants over all other requests. This is justified by the need to facilitate their return to their homeland, as they live in severe poverty and under unstable political conditions.

After the introduction of preferential treatment, a surge of new citizenship applications has been received from various parts of Latin America, particularly from countries that had not previously submitted requests: Guatemala, El Salvador, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Mexico, and others. The Croatian community is by far the largest in Argentina and Chile, with the last major wave of emigration occurring after the end of World War II and in the 1960s.

This has led to an additional slowdown in the processing of applications for acquiring Croatian citizenship, and we are witnessing a decision waiting time of even over 36 months from the application submission date at overseas Consulates.

Is there anything you can do about this?

If your application has been properly submitted and you have not received a decision or any feedback, and more than 18 months have passed, we suggest that you check the status of your application and determine whether it needs to be amended.

What you need to know is that files containing your applications can often be physically lost or remain inactive for years because the assigned case handler has been transferred to another position, gone on sick leave, or taken maternity leave, and the case has not been reassigned to another person.

Considering that your applications are processed by the Foreigners Department and the relevant services (which fall under the Ministry of the Interior and are based in Zagreb), to verify the status of your applications, it is necessary to authorize a lawyer to obtain information about the stage of processing your request and what actions need to be taken to secure a positive decision.

The only way to establish indirect contact with the official handling your case is through this process, which allows you to expedite, complete, or clarify any uncertain facts, ensuring you receive a clear response. It's often necessary to clarify specific details important for determining genealogical facts, such as discrepancies in the names/surnames of ancestors, which might not have been adequately addressed in the original application. Simply put, even trivial errors can cause several months of delay in processing your case, as communication between the Ministry of the Interior, the Consulate, and the Applicant doesn't happen in real-time, and each update requires time.

If your application has been pending for too long, certain legal mechanisms are available to sanction the prolonged inaction of the responsible case handler. However, as a first step, there could be a 'pacifist' approach - engaging a legal expert or personal visit to gather information and obtain feedback on the status of the case and any potential obstacles, thus helping to "move the needle". This can be done in real-time with direct interaction with the officials involved.