Your first weeks in Croatia: five clocks, and the order in which they do not collide

What do you arrange in your first weeks in Croatia, and in which order? As an EU citizen you need no permit, and yet five clocks run at once from the day of arrival. What it costs is modest: the OIB and the registration are free, the residence card costs € 13.27, the dopunsko € 15 a month. The find at the source is a clock that appears in almost no guide: whoever has a temporary stay registers their address with the police within fifteen days of arriving at that address, separately from the larger registration after three months. The pitfall is the car: the PPMV declaration must be with customs within fifteen days of the border, and that is the shortest clock of all.

The five clocks

Clock	Deadline	From when	Counter
PPMV declaration for your car	15 days	bringing the car into Croatia	customs, via e-Građani or form PP-MV
Address registration (form 6b)	15 days	arrival at the address where you stay for more than three months	police (MUP)
Registration of temporary stay (form 1b)	no later than 8 days after the end of your first three months	entry into Croatia	police (MUP)
HZZO, registering and deregistering	8 days	the day your status changes	an HZZO office
OIB	8 days' handling time	your email to the tax authority	Porezna uprava
Dopunsko	activation period 15 days	taking out the policy	HZZO, also online

Why the OIB comes before everything

Without an OIB no lease, no bank account, no car registration and no health-insurance enrolment. The tax authority assigns it to foreigners on request, and that request can go by email: the form plus a scan of your passport or ID card to OIB@porezna-uprava.hr, with your telephone number and the nearest office. The authority handles it as a priority within eight days and tells you when you can collect the certificate; in exceptional cases the number already arrives by email. Whoever does this from the Netherlands arrives with the number in their pocket and makes every other clock with it. How the chain runs after that is in the article on the OIB and registration.

The week of the home: address, lease, police

MUP wants to see the lease certified by a notary, or certified by the ministry of finance; if that has not happened, the owner signs form 6b in person at the police station. Arrange the certification when signing, then the landlord need not come along. With that lease you register your address within fifteen days, and as soon as you stay longer than three months you register your stay with form 1b: with a copy of your identity document, the proof of accommodation, proof of your means of subsistence and health insurance. The registration certificate is free and comes out of the printer; the biometric residence card is optional, costs € 13.27 and is valid for five years.

Three months plus eight days is the outer limit, not the plan. The registration can be done earlier, and it pays: the residence card is your ID at the bank, at HZZO and at the inspection station. Whoever postpones the registration to the last week discovers that the lease still needs certifying and the health insurance is not yet arranged, and then the clocks of MUP and HZZO run out at the same time.

Healthcare: eight days, and the dopunsko straight away

Everyone living in Croatia falls under the compulsory insurance of HZZO, and registering and deregistering must happen within eight days of the event that changes your status: the registration with the police, the start of a job. Which route suits you, with an S1 from the CAK, via your employer or as a self-payer, is in the article on healthcare in Croatia. Take out the dopunsko straight away at enrolment, the supplementary policy of HZZO that covers the co-payments: € 15 a month, € 180 a year, with an activation period of fifteen days. Whoever takes it out later pays every bill themselves in those weeks.

Bank, car and the digital key

The bank asks for your OIB, your identity document and usually proof of address; as an EU resident you have the right to a basic account, and how that works is in the article on banking and paying. With the account often comes your login credential for e-Građani, and with that you file the PPMV declaration for the car without visiting a counter. File that declaration in the first week: without notice that the PPMV has been paid, the inspection station cannot register the car, and what the tax costs is in the article on the car. Also activate the user inbox in e-Građani, because from now on the letters from the government arrive there.

What comes after

The driving licence need not be exchanged as long as it is valid, school runs by address and the tax rate is set by your municipality. Those things belong to the months after and are in the step-by-step plan at /kroatie; this article is about the weeks in which the clocks run.

In Vertrekklaar this is phase 4 of 5 of the journey, step 4.3: the same steps, but for your situation — in your order, tickable, and with the deadlines watched. See the whole journey to Croatia or go straight to step 4.3 in the open plan.