The biggest challenge in 2021 for Croatia is the legacy of the pandemic, which will long continue to affect the overall political, social and economic situation. Besides that, the most important upcoming political event is local elections.

Uncertainty and still enforced travel restrictions could weigh hard on the important tourism sector in 2021, one of the main sources of income for the country, although announcements about vaccines fuel optimism that the sector could recover in the second quarter of the year.

Sven Marcelic, an assistant sociology professor at the University of Zadar, told BIRN that the continuing coronavirus crisis will “structurally determine everything else that will happen”.

According to him, the main challenge is management of the health crisis – “how the government will manage that crisis, and will it do it better than now” – as the latest data on COVID-19 infections and deaths are far from good.

There is also the economic aspect to the crisis, he added: “A good part of Croatia lives off tourism, and we know that it [the sector] will be in big trouble next year, which perhaps creates another problem, of economic decline.”