22 June 2020 at the Rupa border crossing (HAK: live picture) on entering Croatia: the waiting time was exactly one hour and twenty minutes, a traffic jam had formed all the way inland to Slovenia because nobody had taken the opportunity to register in advance under “Register on enter croatia” before entering the country. “If this continues like this, there will be a real chaos at the Croatian border stations during the holiday season when entering the country”, was the unanimous opinion of many waiting people who in the meantime also left their vehicles.
Fight COVID-19
What happened there? In order to offer its guests additional security in the event of a renewed increase in COVID-19 diseases, the Croatian government decided to record their whereabouts and telephone availability in writing at the border and save them in a file.
Good implementation
This procedure for entry into Croatia is currently being implemented, with the border control officers passing a form to the person entering the country so that the necessary data can be entered. The Croatian border official transfers this data via his PC to a centrally stored file, compares it with the identity cards that are also to be handed out and only then may the tourist enter Croatia. Depending on how legible the form is, this process takes between five and eight minutes, as many waiting people report.
Poor use
Already on normal weekdays, a border traffic jam arises when entering Croatia, even if only a few vehicles want to cross the border. Therefore, the Croatians have created the possibility to register under “Register on enter croatia” to speed up the entry process considerably. In this case, the border official simply scans the passports. His computer immediately shows him that the person who wants to cross the border into Croatia has already registered in advance. Telephone number and place of residence are already available and do not need to be asked for and registered. The border official immediately returns the papers and wishes the person a safe journey. Duration of this procedure when entering Croatia: Maximum one minute.
Avoid traffic jams on entry to Croatia
To make it clear once again, because obviously only very few people took advantage of the opportunity to avoid border congestion: The difference between five minutes without registration and one minute with registration is four minutes, for every 100 vehicles that want to cross the border into Croatia, 400 minutes, in other words almost seven hours spent needlessly at the border waiting in traffic jams. Depending on the opened lane to the entry (in Rupa there were two lanes) the waiting time at the entry is reduced, but what remains is still wasted time, which one can spend in Croatia quite better. Unfortunately, there is still no fast lane or express lane for registered tourists in Croatia.
Also register by mobile phone
It is more than easy to register: We put it to the test and tried to make the registration via mobile phone on the website of “Register on enter croatia” while still in a traffic jam before the border when entering Croatia. Even that still worked perfectly, after one minute we could cross the border.
Repeated request for registration
Therefore, here once again the urgent request on behalf of all vacationers in Croatia: Enter the data in advance via the Internet and thus save the following vacationers a lot of time in traffic jams when entering Croatia. By the way: If you know other travellers to Croatia, you should forward the post or share it via Facebook, so that as many as possible take the chance to register in advance to avoid border traffic jams.
