Croatian citizenship through marriage — what the law really says and what is myth

"I married a Croatian, so I'm entitled to a Croatian passport" is one of the most common misconceptions about Croatian citizenship. Marriage to a Croatian citizen does not confer citizenship automatically, and if you live in Serbia, the marriage alone is not a sufficient basis for an application under Article 10. This guide walks through what the Croatian Citizenship Act (Zakon o hrvatskom državljanstvu) actually says: the two different marriage-based grounds (Article 10 and Article 11, paragraph 2), the conditions attached to each, and what you can do if neither applies to you.

Marriage does not grant citizenship automatically

Article 3 of the Act lists the ways of acquiring Croatian citizenship: by descent, by birth on the territory of the Republic of Croatia, by naturalisation and under international treaties. Marriage is not among them. The spouse of a Croatian citizen can acquire citizenship only by naturalisation (prirođenje), that is, by filing an application that is decided by the Croatian Ministry of the Interior (Ministarstvo unutarnjih poslova, MUP).

Both Article 10 and Article 11 say that a foreigner "may" acquire citizenship, not that he or she acquires it. Under Article 26, the Ministry refuses an application if the requirements are not met, and may refuse it even when they are met if it finds that there are reasons of interest to the Republic of Croatia. Citizenship by naturalisation is acquired only on the day the decision on admission to citizenship (rješenje o primitku) is delivered to you (Article 24a).

Article 10: marriage to a Croatian citizen plus permanent residence in Croatia

Article 10 provides that a foreigner may acquire Croatian citizenship by naturalisation if three conditions are met together:

he or she is married to a Croatian citizen,
he or she has been granted permanent residence (stalni boravak),
he or she lives in the Republic of Croatia.

A person who meets these conditions does not have to meet the requirements of Article 8, paragraph 1, items 1–4: being at least 18 years old, release from foreign citizenship, eight years of continuous registered residence in Croatia together with the status of a foreigner with permanent residence, and knowledge of the Croatian language and Latin script, Croatian culture and the social system.

The requirement in item 5 remains: the applicant must respect the legal order of the Republic of Croatia, must have settled all public dues that have fallen due, and there must be no security obstacles to admission to citizenship.

How permanent residence is obtained

Permanent residence is not governed by the Citizenship Act but by the Foreigners Act (Zakon o strancima). Under Article 156 of that Act, permanent residence may be granted to a family member of a Croatian citizen who, immediately before applying, has held temporary residence for four continuous years for the purpose of family reunification with a Croatian citizen (or autonomous residence). A spouse counts as a member of the immediate family (Article 64), and temporary residence for family reunification with a Croatian citizen is governed by Article 63.

The same article says that permanent residence is granted to a person who has not been absent from Croatia for more than eight months in total over several absences, or for more than four months in a single absence; the Act provides exceptions for certain situations. Under Article 157, the applicant must also hold a valid foreign travel document and must not pose a threat to public order, national security or public health. The application is filed at the police administration or police station for your place of residence in Croatia, and the Ministry of the Interior decides on it.

So if you obtain permanent residence as the spouse of a Croatian citizen, the sequence is: temporary residence for family reunification, then permanent residence, and only then the citizenship application. The Foreigners Act also provides other grounds for permanent residence, and Article 10 does not specify on which ground it must have been granted. Check the residence requirements and documents on the Ministry's website or at a police administration.

Article 11, paragraph 2: spouse of an emigrant or an emigrant's descendant

The second marriage-based ground is often overlooked. Article 11, paragraph 1 allows an emigrant (iseljenik) and his or her descendants to acquire citizenship by naturalisation even if they do not meet the requirements of Article 8, paragraph 1, items 2–4. Paragraph 2 extends the same benefit to a foreigner who is married to such a person.

The difference from Article 10 is considerable:

here the Act does not require permanent residence or living in Croatia,
release from your current citizenship is not required,
no test of language, culture and the social system is required,
but item 1 (being at least 18) and item 5 of Article 8 still apply.

What matters most, however, is who counts as an emigrant. Under Article 11, it is a person who emigrated from the territory of the Republic of Croatia before 8 October 1991 with the intention of living abroad permanently; by way of exception, a member of the Croatian people who emigrated from the territory of the former states that, at the time of emigration, included the area of present-day Croatia is also considered an emigrant. The Act expressly states that a person who moved their residence to other states that were at the time part of the same state union as Croatia is not considered an emigrant (nor is a person who emigrated under an international treaty, who renounced Croatian citizenship, or who did not hold the former Croatian republic citizenship or domicile rights in the territory of Croatia). Under that provision, moving from Croatia to Serbia during the Yugoslav period therefore does not make someone an emigrant. We covered this in detail in our guide Croatian citizenship through grandparents.

Paragraph 2 does not specify whether your spouse must first acquire Croatian citizenship on this ground themselves. If you are considering this route, put that question to the consular office or the Ministry before filing.

Do you have to give up Serbian citizenship

Croatian law does not require it on either of these two grounds. The requirement of release from foreign citizenship is in Article 8, paragraph 1, item 2, and applicants under both Article 10 and Article 11 are exempt from that item. The Ministry confirms this on its website: when citizenship is acquired under Article 10 (marriage to a Croatian citizen) or Article 11 (an emigrant, his or her descendants and their spouses), it is permitted to keep the foreign citizenship alongside the Croatian one.

For more on living with two citizenships, see our page Dual citizenship.

Living in Serbia or in Croatia: side-by-side overview

Question	Article 10	Article 11, paragraph 2
Who you are married to	a Croatian citizen	an emigrant or an emigrant's descendant
Permanent residence and living in Croatia	required	not required by the Act
Release from Serbian citizenship	not required	not required
Language and culture test	not required	not required
Being at least 18	not required	required
Respect for the legal order, public dues settled, no security obstacles	required	required

If you live in Serbia and your spouse is a Croatian citizen who is neither an emigrant nor a descendant of an emigrant within the meaning of Article 11, a marriage-based application has nothing to rest on: Article 10 requires permanent residence and living in Croatia. Article 16 (members of the Croatian people) contains no provision on spouses either. The Act has only one other marriage-based ground, in Article 12, paragraph 2 — the spouse of a person admitted to citizenship because of an interest of the Republic of Croatia — and it too requires one year of living in Croatia with approved residence.

As for where to file, the Ministry states that the application is submitted in person at the police administration or police station for the place of your approved temporary or permanent residence, while a person without approved residence in Croatia files through a diplomatic mission or consular office. In Belgrade appointments are booked on the Croatian consular portal (konzularniportal.mvep.hr), and in Subotica, according to the Consulate General's official page, by phone on +381 24 656 900, on working days between 12:00 and 13:00. We described the procedure in our guide to booking an appointment.

Documents for a marriage-based application

The basic list the Ministry gives for every naturalisation application — a CV (životopis), a birth certificate extract, proof of citizenship, a certificate of no criminal record not older than six months, and a certified copy of a valid identity document — is covered on our Documents page. For the marriage ground, the following also matters:

Marriage certificate extract (izvadak iz matice vjenčanih) — the gov.hr portal states that it must not be older than six months. The Ministry states that it need not be enclosed if the marriage was concluded in Croatia, or if a marriage concluded abroad has already been entered in the Croatian register of marriages.
Entry of the marriage in the Croatian register of marriages. The gov.hr portal states that, if the application is based on marriage to a Croatian citizen, the marriage should be entered in the register of marriages in the Republic of Croatia. If you married in Serbia, ask the consular office about registering the marriage.
Legalisation of foreign documents. For foreign public documents (birth certificate, marriage certificate and the like) the Ministry requires prior legalisation, unless international treaties provide otherwise. For public documents from Serbia used in Croatia an apostille is as a rule not needed: legalisation was abolished by the Treaty on Legal Assistance between Croatia and Serbia (NN-MU 6/98, Art. 19), as the Croatian Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs (MVEP) also states. Before you pay for any certification, confirm with the consular office that they require nothing further for your document. Details are in our apostille guide.
Under Article 11: for emigrants the Ministry asks for a certified copy of the travel document or other public document on the basis of which the person emigrated from Croatia, and for descendants also proof of the family relationship with the emigrant.

The Ministry expressly notes that other documents are enclosed for different grounds, so confirm the final list for your case at the place where you file. If you file in Croatia, the administrative fee of EUR 139.36 is paid when you collect the decision on admission to citizenship; abroad, a consular fee is paid when the application is submitted, and you should check its amount with the consular office where you file. An overview of other costs is on our Costs page.

If the marriage ground does not apply to you

Before giving up, check whether you have a ground of your own, independent of the marriage:

Descent (Articles 4 and 5) — if your parent was a Croatian citizen at the time of your birth. The Act sets deadlines for some cases, so check them before filing.
Belonging to the Croatian people (Article 16) — a member of the Croatian people who has no registered residence in Croatia only needs to meet the requirement in Article 8, paragraph 1, item 5. For the evidence to enclose, read How to prove Croatian ethnicity.
Emigrant status (Article 11, paragraph 1) — if you yourself are an emigrant or a descendant of an emigrant.

All the grounds are set side by side in our comparison table.

Sources

Note: this text is for information only; this website is not official and the text is not legal advice. Regulations and fees change — before filing, check with the competent authority (the Croatian Ministry of the Interior, or the consular office where you file).