- by croatiaweek
- July 12, 2026
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in
News
Zagreb
ZAGREB, 12 July 2026 – Croatia has launched a new €4 million project aimed at modernising the country’s civil registry system by bringing together five existing databases into a single unified register.
The “Digitalisation of Civil Status Processes” project is being implemented by the Ministry of Justice, Public Administration and Digital Transformation in partnership with APIS IT. More than 85% of the funding is being provided through the European Union’s Competitiveness and Cohesion Programme 2021–2027.
The project will run for 24 months, covering the development, testing and implementation of the new system.
Its main objective is to establish a single national civil registry based on the principle of “one person – one record”, replacing five separate registries with one integrated database. Officials say the move will improve the efficiency of public administration and judicial services, enhance data quality and interoperability, and reduce the administrative burden on citizens.
Speaking at the project’s launch conference, Minister of Justice, Public Administration and Digital Transformation Damir Habijan said civil registries are among the country’s most important state registers, recording key life events such as births, marriages, civil partnerships and deaths.
Croatia already offers four related digital services through the e-Građani platform: e-Matrične knjige, e-Novorođenče, e-Prijava vjenčanja and e-Prijava životnog partnerstva.
The new project will introduce three additional online services:
• e-Prijava smrti (death registration)
• e-Promjena osobnog imena (change of personal name)
• e-Vraćanje na prezime prije sklapanja braka ili životnog partnerstva (restoring a surname used before marriage or civil partnership)
Habijan said the project follows the “Once Only” principle, allowing citizens to provide information to public authorities only once, while improving data sharing between government institutions.
He added that more than 2.3 million people currently use the e-Građani platform, while the mGrađani mobile application has around 181,000 users, with further growth expected.
APIS IT CEO Saša Bilić said the project will modernise the civil registry system, strengthen data security and interoperability, and enable the use of the latest technologies, including artificial intelligence tools.
The initiative continues Croatia’s long-term digital transformation of civil status administration and builds on an earlier European Commission technical assistance project that analysed existing systems and outlined a future development model. The aim is to move from digitalising individual records to a fully integrated system for managing citizens’ civil status data, in line with European best practice.
