The waste management situation in Croatia

In the course of their ongoing evaluation of the Republic of Croatia’s national efforts to implement and comply with given environmental standards, the institutions of the European Commission have confirmed ongoing progress in the field of waste management, but also highlighted a number of remaining shortcomings. In particular, they established that, with regard to essential requirements set by various EU directives and national targets for waste management, that are still many shortcomings and considerable development requirements persist.

This means that the country’s entire waste management planning is therefore also under criticism. This is exemplified by a dunning procedure currently being pursued by the European Commission, due to the current lack of a valid national waste management plan – the previous plan expired in 2015 – and the lack of a waste reduction programme. On the other hand, the objectives of waste management have always been very ambitious in Croatia, as under the new government as well, which has set very ambitious waste management goals. Beyond that, there are some very progressively positioned initiatives and approaches in municipalities (e.g. “zero waste”) dealing with waste topics.

This situation analysis on the Croatian waste management sector and its framework conditions is geared towards taking this fact into account and shedding more light on its circumstances. This will help to identify possible approaches to improving the situation by means of intensified cooperation, knowledge and technology transfer with Germany, and to pursue these in a targeted manner.