Form 18a and the health certificate for foreign workers in Croatia
Croatia's regulation in Narodne novine 43/2026 requires a health and vaccination certificate on Form 18a, no older than 90 days, with the first application.
A third country national from a visa regime country must attach a certificate of health and vaccination status on Form 18a to a first application for temporary residence. The obligation sits in Article 8 of the Regulation published in Narodne novine 43/2026. The certificate may not be older than 90 days.
Who files it, and when
The regulation entered into force on 30 April 2026. The duty attaches to the visa regime and to the first application. A worker from a country whose nationals need a visa to enter Croatia, which includes workers from Nepal, India and the Philippines, attaches the certificate to the first file. A worker renewing a permit does not repeat the step on the same basis, because Article 8 governs the first approval of temporary residence.
The form was prepared by the Ministry of the Interior together with the Ministry of Health and the Croatian Institute of Public Health, so it is completed to the content those bodies set rather than to whatever any clinic chooses to write. It covers both health status and vaccination status, which means a report without the vaccination part is not a complete certificate.
The 90 day window is tighter than it looks
The 90 days run from the date the certificate is issued, not from the worker's arrival. That puts it in direct tension with the decision deadline in Article 91(8) of the Aliens Act, under which the ministry decides on a complete application within 90 days at the latest, with a possible extension of a further 30 days. A certificate issued in Kathmandu a month before the file is lodged leaves two months of cover for a procedure that can take three.
| Step | Who performs it | Position in the calendar |
|---|---|---|
| Medical examination and vaccination | Worker, in the country of origin | Immediately before the file is lodged |
| Issue of Form 18a | Authorised medical institution | Day of examination, valid 90 days |
| Filing of the application | Employer, police administration or station | Within days of the certificate being issued |
| Decision on the application | Ministry of the Interior | Up to 90 days from a complete application |
The practical order is therefore the reverse of the intuitive one. The examination is not booked when the candidate is selected. It is booked when the rest of the file is ready to lodge, including the employment contract, the accommodation declaration on Form 17a and the employer eligibility evidence. An examination sitting idle for three weeks before filing is three weeks of cover thrown away.
Cost and the recurring mistakes
The cost of the examination and vaccinations is borne in the country of origin and varies by market, so it is contracted rather than estimated. The cost that is fixed and knowable in advance is the Ministry of the Interior fee schedule: 74.32 euro for issuing a residence and work permit, 31.85 euro for producing the biometric residence card under the standard procedure, 59.73 euro under the expedited one, and 9.29 euro for issuing the document. If a file collapses because the certificate has expired, those amounts are paid twice and the arrival schedule shifts by a full decision cycle.
Three mistakes repeat across almost every corridor. The first is a certificate without the vaccination part, which looks orderly until an officer compares it with Form 18a. The second is a translation without a court interpreter's certification, which sends the file back for completion and interrupts the complete application clock. The third is booking group examinations for an entire cohort three months ahead, so that certificates expire before the last worker in the group receives a visa.
Where Form 18a sits in the file
Form 18a travels in the same file as the declaration of adequate accommodation on Form 17a, described in the piece on accommodation standards and the rent cap, and behind both sit the employer conditions covered in the piece on employer conditions for a positive Employment Service opinion. At renewal the health certificate is not repeated, though other documents are, as set out in the piece on permit renewal deadlines and fees.
A health certificate rarely sinks an application by itself. What sinks it is the order in which the certificate was obtained. Employers who put the medical at the end of file preparation rather than at the start do not have this problem. A view of document requirements by destination country sits on the employers page.
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