When the world rang into New Year 2023, Croatia celebrated one more thing at midnight. The former Yugoslav Republic became a part of the Schengen area on January 1, 2023. After this, border controls are lifted at Slovenia and Hungary border crossings in two separate ceremonies.
With this change, Croatia is now the Schengen area’s 27th member, allowing people to move through the nation without border checks. Many Croats welcomed this move as a historic one that they have been waiting for decades.
Kresco Ledic is a resident of Croatia’s capital Zagreb and owns one of the high-end restaurants. He expressed his joy at this change by saying, “About entering the Eurozone, there were some split opinions. But about Schengen, everybody thinks the same. People don’t like restrictions, they like to have freedom of movement.”
Starting January 1, 2023, residents of Croatia can travel across Europe to places as far as the Netherlands, Estonia, and Portugal without going through a single border check.
Until December 2022, people would have to wait for hours at borders and queue up to get their passports checked before crossing the border. The border checks had been active for 31 years since 1991 when Slovenia and Croatia split from Yugoslavia.
For the ceremonial opening at the Croatia-Slovenia border, the same was jointly crossed by Natasa Pric Musar (Slovenian President), Andrej Penkovic (Croatian PM), and Ursula Von Der Leyen (European Commission President).
However, according to local border guards, there won’t be any major migrant influx after this change. But the regular traffic heading Southeast Europe could be diverted towards Croatia from Hungary. That’s because this is a shorter route, and is now borderless.