The step-by-step plan for Croatia

With this step you know in which order you arrange everything. As an EU citizen you don't need a permit, but the order is fixed.

Everything starts with the OIB: your personal identification number. Every contract, every account and every counter asks for it. Then comes the home. Only then do you register your residence. You don't do that at the municipality, but with the police (MUP, the Croatian Ministry of the Interior).

What to know about that registration:

• You register with form 1b, at the latest eight days after the end of your first three months.
• You can apply for a biometric residence card at the same time. It's optional and costs € 13.27. In practice you do want it, because it's your ID at every following desk.
• After five years' uninterrupted residence you apply for permanent residence with form 3b.

The plan keeps the order and the clocks for you.

With this step you choose where in Croatia you'll live. Make that choice before the rest of the journey. It determines your rental market, your winter and your tax bill.

On holiday you choose the coast, but living is a different sum:

• The Adriatic coast (Split, Zadar, Istria) has the summer you know, and a winter almost nobody knows. From October to April restaurants and shops close. Half the housing stock is let to holidaymakers in summer, which makes annual contracts scarce.
• Zagreb is the opposite: a real city with life, jobs and schools all year round. But it lies inland, with cold winters and without the sea.

There's a tax side too. Since 2024 municipalities set their own tax rate, and Zagreb sits at the top end.

With this step you see what the move is going to cost you. The paperwork is cheap here: the OIB is free and the residence card costs € 13.27.

The money is in the journey: about 1,400 kilometres to Zagreb, with tolls and vignettes along the way. It's also in the home. And above all it's in the car. Croatia has no exemption from its special motor vehicle tax (the PPMV) on relocation. That makes the car a real sum here.

Work it out with your own choices.

With this step you decide together whether Croatia suits you. You end up with a few conditions on paper that you both stand behind.

Going alone? Then have this conversation with the people you leave behind. The questions below work for them too.

Take three evenings. One conversation is too short for a decision like this. Agree on three evenings, with a week in between:

• Evening 1, why. What do we hope to find in Croatia? What are we leaving behind here? Would that really be different there?
• Evening 2, what we give up. Who and what will we miss? What are we dreading most? What do we do if it disappoints?
• Evening 3, the conditions. What has to be arranged for each of us to say yes? When do we check together whether it's going well, for example after six and after twelve months? And what would be a reason for us to go back?

Write the conditions down. On the kitchen-table card it all fits on one A4 sheet.

The country feels familiar: euro, Schengen, two days' driving. Still, three things need to be on the table:

• The wage level. The minimum wage is € 1,050 gross a month. Skilled salaries too are far below Dutch ones.
• The season on the coast. The summer is overwhelming there and the winter empty.
• The distance to work. Won't you keep working remotely for a Dutch employer? Then look at the Croatian labour market honestly.

Divide the work. Agree who takes on which part of this plan: the papers, the house and the cancellations, the school, the move. That way not one of you carries everything. Invite your partner into your plan; then you can both see what's done.

Is one of you going without an income of your own? Whoever lives in Croatia and doesn't work in the Netherlands usually no longer builds up AOW. For every year you're not insured, you later get 2 percent less AOW. From the moment you're no longer insured, you have one year to take out voluntary insurance with the SVB. Also discuss who carries the income in the first months, whether the partner without an income keeps an account and money of their own, and how you decide together on big expenses.

Married, registered or living together? It can make a difference for your partner's residence permit, for co-insurance in healthcare and for inheritance. If you're both Dutch, each of you lives in Croatia in your own right. If your partner has a nationality from outside the EU, they live there as your family member. If they stay longer than three months, they get a residence card of their own. A spouse always counts as a family member, a registered partner if Croatia treats that partnership as equivalent to marriage. If you live together unmarried, you prove a durable relationship and Croatia assesses it itself. Check at your healthcare further on in your plan what else applies to you.

Are children coming? How you tell them depends on their age:

• Up to about four: tell them shortly before the move and keep fixed habits, like the bedtime ritual and the cuddly toy in the hand luggage.
• Primary school: tell them well in advance and let them look along: photos of the school, the neighbourhood and the house. Let them choose something, like their room.
• Teenagers: involve them in the decision itself. For them, saying goodbye to friends weighs heaviest. Agree how they keep in touch and when they see their friends again.

In Croatia a child starts first grade if they're six on 1 April of that year. Before enrolment a committee of the school assesses how your child is developing. Enrolment goes by catchment area, so the address of your rental contract decides the school.

Who learns the language, and when? Croatian is a Slavic language. Outside the tourist zone and the IT sector you won't get through a counter with English. Often the partner without work needs the language most, and precisely that partner has no colleagues to practise with. Plan it together, preferably before you leave.

With this step you set when you want to be in Croatia. Choose the date below. The plan works out whether that's feasible with what still has to happen. From that moment it watches the clocks of this journey:

• Three months plus eight days for the registration.
• Fifteen days for the PPMV declaration of the car.
• Eight days for the healthcare enrolment.