An important milestone for Croatians to be able to travel to the US for business and tourism, without the need for a visa.
February 18, 2020 — As of later this year, Croatians will officially have the right to travel to the USA without a visa.
Throughout the past three years, authorities in Croatia have committed to joining the American Visa Waiver program (VWP), to grant their citizens the freedom of visa-free travel into the US.
Having already complied with many of the security requirements for joining the VWP, the final condition set by the US for the abolition of the visa requirement was a drop in the number of denied visa applications to below 3%.
Croatia attained that result back in September 2020 as the refusal rate dropped to 2.69%. In addition to Croatia — Bulgaria, Cyprus and Romania are now the only Schengen countries who are not part of the program. Their current refusal rates are 9.75%, 2.78%, 9.11% respectively.
Croatian travellers will now only need to apply for an online authorization called ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) in order to be able to enter the US visa-free.
The United States welcomed approximately 20 million VWP travellers in FY 2014 who, according to the Department of Commerce, spent approximately $84 billion on goods and services. VWP travellers injected nearly $231 million a day into local economies across the country. Currently, there are 39 countries in the VW program.
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