Clean air and a clean environment are our rights; our nature isn’t a trash can.
CDN stands in full solidarity with the citizens, activists, and environmental organizations who have taken to the streets in Croatia to demand justice over the illegal dumping of hazardous waste in Gospić and across the country!
When 37,000 tonnes of waste are illegally dumped, and citizens are left uncertain about the safety of their soil, the air they breathe, and the water they use, it is clear the system has failed- not another waste management failure, but a grave political one, where the government is no longer serving the public. Nearly a decade after the discarding began under local leadership that now claims to have known nothing, the government’s own admission stands: not a single kilogram of hazardous waste has been removed to date. Our communities are not dumping grounds.
This is precisely why the Croatian government's response under Andrej Plenković cannot be reduced to promises of future action by a new scientific advisory body meant to address the very crisis the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) has failed to address. A government cannot spend years failing to protect communities and then expect those same communities to simply trust another committee, another promise, and one more deadline. The people of Gospić did not create this crisis, but they are being forced to live with its consequences; they are asking for something simple: the right to know, the right to participate, and the right to live in a healthy environment.
We reject the idea that environmental protection is a luxury or a secondary political issue. Clean air, safe water, healthy soil, and protection from toxic pollution are human rights, not privileges tied to where someone lives or how much political power their community can muster. Gospić is not an isolated case: remediating Rakitovac alone is estimated at 125 million EUR, while cleaning up illegal dumps across Croatia could cost hundreds of millions more, which is a scale that only makes sense as a systemic failure.
We therefore call on the Croatian Government to:
immediately implement a transparent and independently monitored plan for the complete remediation of the Gospić site;
publish all relevant environmental analyses and monitoring data;
establish genuinely independent long-term environmental and health monitoring;
ensure meaningful participation of affected communities and civil society in decisions concerning environmental risks;
identify and remediate all known environmental “hotspots” across Croatia;
establish clear legal, financial and institutional responsibility for environmental violations;
ensure that those responsible for illegal waste practices are held accountable;
strengthen public waste-management systems rather than permitting communities to become dumping grounds for private profit.
These demands are not radical, but a minimum any government owes to its people. If you live in Croatia, join the next mobilization and hold your local authorities accountable right where it hurts the most - at the ballot box.
