After reading the chapter on Croatia in the 2026 Rule of Law Report, it is difficult to escape the impression that two parallel realities exist: the one seen by the European Commission and the one encountered every day by Croatian citizens.
The European Commission has published its new 2026 Rule of Law Report, analysing the state of affairs in all EU Member States and four candidate countries across four key areas: justice systems, anti-corruption frameworks, media freedom and pluralism, and other institutional issues linked to checks and balances.
The full text of the report's chapter on Croatia is available on the European Commission's website, but reading the report itself raises the question of whether the Commission lives in the same reality as the citizens of Croatia. While certain positive developments are listed, numerous serious problems are merely mentioned in passing or completely overlooked.
In the section on the justice system, the election of a new President of the Supreme Court is highlighted as one of the successes. However, the report does not mention the fact that the Prime Minister attempted to politically link the election of the President of the Supreme Court to the appointment of Constitutional Court judges, even though there was no basis for such a condition in either the Constitution or the law. This move clearly called the rule of law in the Republic of Croatia into question. The report also does not question, but merely mentions, the fact that the appointment took place after three public calls for applications and 14 months after the death of the previous President of the Supreme Court, Radoslav Dobronić.
It is important to note that the President of the Supreme Court plays a key role in the functioning of the judiciary. The office leads the highest court in the country, initiates oversight procedures concerning lower courts, contributes to the harmonisation of judicial practice and represents the judiciary in relations with other branches of government. These important powers give the President of the Supreme Court a direct impact on the stability and effective functioning of the entire justice system, as shown by the examples of oversight of the courts in Zadar and Šibenik cited in the report. The report also merely notes in passing that three new Constitutional Court judges have still not been appointed.
The most damning part of the report concerns perceptions of corruption. According to a special 2026 Eurobarometer survey, as many as 88% of Croatian citizens believe that corruption is widespread in Croatia, compared with the EU average of 71%. Even more alarming is the fact that 61% of citizens believe that corruption affects their daily lives, twice the European Union average of 30%.
The European Commission nevertheless cites the implementation of the Action Plan for the Prevention of Corruption (2025 - 2027) as a positive indicator of progress in the fight against corruption. It is worth recalling that one of the 63 measures contained in the action plan is the establishment of the "Stop Corruption" portal, supposedly a tool for combating corruption through which it is not actually possible to report corruption, a portal Gong has written about previously.
The report also confirms the long-standing problem of cooperation between the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) and Croatian institutions. EPPO still does not have direct access to the Tax Administration's databases, and negotiations on the conclusion of the necessary working arrangements have been suspended. This represents a serious limitation in investigations into criminal offences involving European funds.
The system for monitoring asset declarations continues to show serious weaknesses. In 2025, just five officials were responsible for processing around 4,300 asset declarations, with one additional adviser subsequently hired. While the system for filing asset declarations has been digitalised to make it easier for officials subject to the obligation to enter information about their assets, the tool for comparing asset declarations is, at the same time, "still under development". The Commission for the Resolution of Conflicts of Interest can still conduct checks only manually, and the system does not yet allow automatic alerts to be generated when discrepancies are found between submitted asset declarations and data held in other registers, making cross-checking more difficult.
The Commission for the Resolution of Conflicts of Interest has also warned that it can retrieve only data from the current year, not previous years, and must check different registers and request access to information from other bodies. Although, by some miracle, the Commission's conclusion is positive, the data it cites in the report show just how limited the system is. Of approximately 3,000 asset declarations submitted each year, only around 50 are actually checked.
It is also important to note that checking for unlawfully acquired assets does not fall within the Commission's remit at all. It can only report suspicious cases to the police or the State Attorney's Office, and no such reports were made in 2025.
The Commission also notes certain administrative improvements in this area, although a closer look at the fine print of the report reveals data that contradict its conclusions about progress. For example, while the service of the Commission for the Prevention of Conflicts of Interest responsible for checking asset declarations is still waiting for additional staff to be hired to oversee the huge number of declarations submitted, three new advisers have been hired in the service responsible for supervising lobbying, even though it deals with a considerably smaller volume of work.
One of the shortcomings identified by the Commission itself is the fact that, although public officials are required to report important meetings with lobbyists, there are no criteria or practical guidelines for defining what constitutes an important meeting, meaning that such meetings are not reported in practice.
The Commission also warns that Croatian legislation still does not regulate third-party spending during election campaigns or corporate donations by companies holding public procurement contracts.
Even the European Commission is concerned about the state of public procurement in Croatia. In 2025, the State Commission for Supervision of Public Procurement Procedures (DKOM) reviewed just 3.5% of all published procurement procedures, only a slight increase from 2.6% the previous year. An even more serious problem is the fact that around 13% of public money is spent through simplified procedures that are not subject to DKOM oversight at all.
In the area of media freedom, the Commission concludes that there have been no significant changes. Problems with access to information remain the same as in previous years. Citizens and journalists continue to face delays in responses from public authorities or receive incomplete information, while a new Act on the Right of Access to Information is still being prepared.
One of the largest discrepancies between official data and the assessments of journalists' organisations concerns so-called SLAPP lawsuits against journalists (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation). The European Commission notes that, according to research by the Croatian Journalists' Association, there were at least 696 active lawsuits against journalists and media outlets in 2025. By contrast, an analysis by the Ministry of Justice, Public Administration and Digital Transformation identified only 32 cases that could potentially be considered SLAPP lawsuits.
Given that the President of the County Court in Zadar, Ivan Marković, alone filed 16 lawsuits against a single newspaper publisher, and was consequently named Europe's biggest judicial SLAPP-er this year, it is unclear what methodology the Ministry used to arrive at a figure we would very much like to be true.
The report also discusses a new law whose stated aim is to protect journalists from SLAPP lawsuits and concludes that "further progress has been made" compared with 2025. At the same time, it points out that a key element is missing from the legislative changes; they do not cover lawsuits brought in criminal proceedings, precisely those most frequently used in cases involving defamation or insult.
Another issue raised in the report is the financial and managerial dependence of local radio stations and media outlets on local authorities, which calls their editorial independence into question. The Croatian Journalists' Trade Union has also provided a broader assessment of this chapter of the Rule of Law Report.
In its rather limited assessment of the situation of civil society in Croatia, the Commission notes some progress in introducing multi-year funding for civil society organisations, while at the same time recalling that CIVICUS continues to rate Croatia's civic space as "narrowed". Once again this year, the Government assured the Commission that it would adopt a National Plan for Creating an Enabling Environment for the Development of Civil Society, even though the last strategic document for the development of civil society expired back in 2016 and the adoption of its successor has been postponed for years.
Once again this year, the European Commission's report leaves the impression of a document that dutifully records formal progress, new hires, action plans and legislative amendments, while often neglecting the question of their actual effectiveness. While the Commission registers activities that have been carried out and outcomes that have been achieved, citizens simultaneously report record-high levels of concern that corruption is widespread, state bodies themselves point to the limitations under which they operate, journalists warn of hundreds of lawsuits restricting media freedom, and civil society points to the narrowing of the space in which it can operate and influence public policy.
For this reason, after reading the chapter on Croatia in the 2026 Rule of Law Report, it is difficult to escape the impression that two parallel realities exist; the one seen by the Commission and the one encountered every day by Croatian citizens.
