How to get Croatian citizenship as a member of the Croatian people? (+ obstacles when applying on all grounds)

The grounds for becoming a Croatian citizen can be acquired differently. This also means that each ground has its provisions, rules, procedures, and regarding the mentioned - documents that must be fulfilled in any particular request. In this author's article, we will cover the most common basis - belonging to the Croatian people/nation, with the addition of the origin's determinant in the first few paragraphs.

Many articles had been written on this topic of Croatian citizenship, quite a lot of them of high quality, but a good part of them are out of date since the legal provisions are often changed in recent years. So this article is linked to the provisions and referring Court practice from the active Croatian Citizenship Act 138/21, valid as of 01.01.2022.

a) By origin

We will not vocalize too loud the legal provisions on this ground, as we suppose you have surely already read all of that but let's just make some frameworks as to what exactly is the origin according to the Croatian Law on Citizenship:

1 - whose parents are both Croatian citizens at the time of his birth;

2 - one of whose parents is a Croatian citizen at the time of the child's birth and the child was born in the Republic of Croatia;

3 - of foreign citizenship or without citizenship adopted by Croatian citizens according to the provisions of a special law;

4 - a child born abroad, one of whose parents is a Croatian citizen at the time of his birth, acquires Croatian citizenship by origin if, by the time he reaches the age of 21, he is registered for enrollment as a Croatian citizen with the competent authority of the Republic of Croatia abroad or in the Republic of Croatia or settles in the Republic Croatia, the so-called direct citizenship enrollment.

There are some other exceptions and benefits for acquisition that are valid until 31.12.2022., but it’s for another article at the moment.

IMPORTANT TO NOTE:

"Croatian citizenship by origin, based on the above-mentioned provisions, can only be acquired by persons born after the entry into force of the Act on Croatian Citizenship or born after October 8, 1991"

b) According to belonging to the Croatian people/nation

The ground for the acquisition of Croatian citizenship according to belonging to the Croatian people fits into the category of acquisition by naturalization. Some other grounds in this group are:

• the ground for emigration from the Republic of Croatia,
• the ground of existing interest in the Republic of Croatia,
• the ground for readmission to Croatian citizenship.

Let’s head back to the ground of belonging to the Croatian people/nation.

We are all aware of how the Croatian diaspora considerable and large is, but maybe we are not aware of the time passing. Namely, there are grown-ups of the 5th and 6th generations of Croatian emigrants who have adjusted to their new communities and have no significant ties to their Croatian roots.

They may feel as such in the depths of their hearts and many of them strive for a formal connection with the Croatian community. The current Croatian Citizenship Act has made this possible to a large extent but a lot of research and proof of this right is needed, which is not negligible.

What is also important for this purpose of acquiring Croatian citizenship is genealogy, the science that studies the origin, and development of family lineage. Developed in the Middle Age, the science of genealogy had the aim of more reliable tracking and control over origins and a certain degree of kinship among noble families.

Above in the text, we briefly mentioned the difficulty of proving the Croatian nation's belongings and this is also supported by the fact that the connection has to be presented all the way back to the ancestor who is or was a member of the Croatian nation.

People from North and South America and Australia find themselves more or less in the described situation.

Proof of belonging to the Croatian people

Belonging to the Croatian people is determined by proving an earlier declaration in legal transactions or simply by stating Croatian affiliation in various public documents. Moreover, the activity of promoting the interests of the Croatian people plays a very important role, which is often proven by participation in Croatian associations abroad (such as associations of sports, culture, etc.). Exceptionally, evidence of belonging to the Croatian people doesn't have to be submitted by a person whose parents have been indisputably established to belong to the Croatian nation. According to this, it is clear that your grandmother or grandfather's belonging to the Croatian people can’t be the ground for your admission to Croatian citizenship because, in proceedings like this one, it would be necessary to prove your personal belonging to the Croatian nation, and again - unless it is indisputable and it is established by the parents. 

In practice, we get a bundle of questions regarding the interpretation of this provision, as the fact that belonging can be proven in many ways. We would like to approach differently to this uncertainties - It's clear from the Court practice that declaring Croatian nationality in the last few years of one's life, everything in order to get citizenship, means absolutely nothing and could even be considered a criminal offense by the Ministry of the Interior (MUP), the institution that brings certain decisions on this ground. 

Therefore, evidence-wise, it has to be much more extensive and profound to prove your Croatian people's belongings. Moreover, this may sound peculiar, but for many people, it is actually very difficult to prove belongings to the Croatian people, even though it is an obvious fact that the long-haul period did the harm.

Then, at the bottom end, we have requests when individuals want to prove their personal belonging to the Croatian nation by placing evidence of support and following the Croatian national football team. This is certainly not a basis for proof in the sense of the provisions of Article 16, Paragraph 2 of the Act on Croatian Citizenship, and you should not hope for that.

Photo 1 - Successful admission of  "Domovnica", (all rights reserved with LJUBIC Law Firm)

What invisible obstacles do we have when acting on all grounds while applying for Croatian citizenship?

In order to reach a position where we have a clear situation for creating and submitting an application that will be accepted by the deciding bodies (and it's not solely the Ministry of Interior - MUP, there are many more behind the curtains), certain obstacles could appear such as:

SITUATION #1:

Solving the problem of registering a person with a surname containing a letter that is not part of the Croatian alphabet (Á).

For the client, a Hungarian citizen, we have registered the acquisition of citizenship. The obstacle that appeared during the process is that his surname contains a letter that does not exist according to the Croatian alphabet (the letter Á), namely the person has Kovács surname. It is important to point out that many competent services previously made mistakes and arbitrarily "transferred" such a letter to the letter "A" – without a tick, which is an absolute and huge mistake.

And not to mention specific surnames of our Croatian diaspora in North and South America...  That's where we come to:

SITUATION #2:

We all know that South Americans have several first and last names, and of course, people of Croatian origin adopted also this tradition over time, in order to adapt to the social environment in which they grew up.

This is how a banal situation happened. Specifically, a person born in Peru has 3 personal names, and the former law provisions in Croatia did not allow more than 2 names to be registered in the passport, so the person had to "give up" on one name in accordance...and then, when this law provision dropped out, the client was invited to adjust name once again while time for renewing/prolonging passport hit up.

SITUATION #3:

If your ancestor, for instance, your great-grandfather was born named Marko but after coming to Australia he became Mark over time and as such participated in the rest of his life and legal transactions including in the death certificate, then you have a more difficult situation. Changing the name of a dead person requires additional resources, and is considered a separate administrative procedure. This has been proved somewhat many people get stuck because proving something that was created 100 years ago or even more, is an obstacle in itself.

Those 3 situations imply that the acquisition of citizenship includes many other administrative actions, before, during, and after the process itself and that it can never be a separate entity.

In an addition, we have left an important last situation, to draw attention to the fact that the power of conducting the final decision is always in the hands of the official who gets your case, and his interpretation of the law. 

Namely:

Your ancestor must be identified as a Croat because, as we are speaking here about Croatian origin and affiliation grounds. That is natural. However, there is a problem in real time because in many old records in the Registry books during the time of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the nationality term column was not recorded.

That is the way how citizenship can be denied for reasons of legal proof rather than using logic and a sequence of conclusions based on facts (e.g. the place of birth is a Catholic parish on the island, the existence of a baptismal certificate so it can be concluded that Croatian nationality is persisted for sure. But the reality is often the opposite - and we get that the official person rejects the request or makes a negative decision).

And what about emigrants and descendants?

Article 11, paragraph 3 of the Croatian citizenship Act prescribes that an emigrant, among others, is not considered a person who has changed his residence to any SFRJ country from what then was the territory of the Republic of Croatia.

Following above mentioned legal provisions, for instance, your grandfather or grandmother who changed their place of residence from the former Republic of Croatia to the former Republic of Macedonia are not emigrants in the sense of Article 11 of the Croatian citizenship Act. (or in other words, You as their descendant do not meet the conditions for the acquisition of Croatian citizenship based on the ancestor's emigration from the territory of the Republic of Croatia.)

Photo 2 - "Croatian House", (all rights reserved with LJUBIC Law Firm)

The actual Croatian Citizenship Act provisions from 2022, however, provided easier acquisition of Croatian citizenship for emigrants who were members of the Croatian people from the former Republics of the SFRY, other than Croatia as well (that's what is today's territory of the states of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Slovenia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Kosovo). This is certainly a simplified provision in the full sense, and with these latest amendments Croatian Citizenship Act, the legislator has taken care of this numerous category of persons/emigrants as well.

You can download the mentioned active Croatian Citizenship Act 138/21 here.

How and where to apply for Croatian citizenship?

The application for acquiring Croatian citizenship is submitted depending on the basis of the application. In accordance, it is possible to submit a request personally or through a representative in the competent police department/station in the territory of the Republic of Croatia (place of residence or last place of residence of the applicant) and/or if the applicant lives or resides abroad, submit the request to the nearest Consular Office of the Republic of Croatia.

Forms for acquiring Croatian citizenship can be found at the link – https://mup.gov.hr/obrasci-281565/281565

Croatian citizenship as part of EU citizenship

The great value of Croatian citizenship is reflected in the fact that every Croatian citizen automatically becomes a citizen of the European Union. Namely, although the European Union is not a super-state, but stands as a community of many states, the institute of European citizen and European citizenship exists as such, and it is acquired by introducing into the citizenship of any member state of the European Union.

AS CONCLUSION: The overall value of Croatian citizenship is evident without any vast need for explanation, and one of the most common ways you can get possession of a Croatian passport are the basics of origin and belonging to the Croatian people, which we've presented through various situations in this article.

It is very crucial to determine what basis are most convenient for your case when applying for Croatian citizenship, whether it is under article 4, 5, 11, 16, or maybe consider some other grounds that are not at first thinking of yours. Once you define it and submit a request, there is no going back.