Croatia disagrees with Dutch FM's negative travel advice

The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs' negative travel advice for Croatia due to increasing coronavirus infections was "a negative surprise", the Croatian ambassador to the Netherlands, Dubravka Plejic Markovic, said to broadcaster NOS. According to her, the situation in Croatia is not critical enough to justify a downgrade from a "code yellow" to "code orange" travel advice, which means that Dutch are strongly advised to avoid all non-essential trips to an area.

"Now that the summer has started, countries such as Croatia and the Netherlands are seeing an increase in the number of corona cases," the ambassador said. But the number of infections in Croatia is still below European standards and security measures are in order, Plejic Markovic added. She estimated that there are now nearly 50 thousand tourists in her country, some 60 percent of whom are in the northern county of Istria, which currently has the least infections.

Plejic Markovic called the Dutch government's decision unfair. She denied allegations that Croatia is not providing detailed enough information on the coronavirus situation in the country, and that the country is not testing enough. "So far, more than 100 thousand tests have been done, which is 26 thousand per one million inhabitants," she said to the broadcaster. 

She hopes the government will move Croatia back to code yellow in its travel advice, on which level recreational travel is allowed. The ambassador is worried that other countries will follow the Netherlands' example and warn their residents away from Croatia. Tourism is one of Croatia's main sources of income, and due to the coronavirus crisis, the number of tourists visiting the country already decreased significantly.