Zagreb Holds Emergency Session Over Lika Waste Crisis

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic called an emergency meeting of the ruling coalition for today at 11 a.m., to be held over video link, after a USKOK finding on an illegal dump near Gospic confirmed that around 37,000 tons of waste from Slovenia, Italy and partly from Croatia itself had ended up in Lika. For a neighboring country still aligning its own regulations with the EU’s, the case is a measure of how much that framework is worth without the infrastructure to back it up: Croatia is an EU member state with neither a hazardous waste landfill nor an incinerator, so everything dug up near Gospic will have to be exported to other member states.

The order of the meeting shows how serious the situation has become. Plenkovic first sits down with the inner cabinet, then with representatives of the parties that make up the parliamentary majority. The call came after the main coalition partner, Homeland Movement leader Ivan Penava, requested an urgent coalition session and also demanded a decision to begin cleaning up the contaminated site.

What the Findings Showed in Lika’s Soil

Analyses published by USKOK last week showed sharply elevated concentrations of copper, zinc, lead and antimony. The key detail is not the list of metals but the fact that the waste is so thoroughly mixed with the soil that separation is no longer possible, so the cleanup amounts to digging up and exporting the entire mixture.

The scale is known from official records and estimates:

• waste was dumped over a period of a year and a half, across an area of about 14,000 square meters
• the average depth is three meters, in places as much as eight
• the mass includes plastic, electronic waste, medical waste and construction material
• groundwater tests found PFAS concentrations twice the permitted limit

The Sincek couple, linked to the illegal dumping, was arrested in February 2025 and spent ten months in pretrial detention before being released. The court proceedings are still pending, and the land, meanwhile, remains exactly as it was found.

Why Aren’t the Excavators on Site Yet?

Because the Environmental Protection and Energy Efficiency Fund is handling the cleanup through public procurement. Fund director Luka Balen told tportal that the process for part of the waste has already started: procurement is underway for about 4,500 tons of hazardous bulk waste and about 650 tons of non-hazardous waste, with bids set to open on August 25.

We are not running from the problem. We are solving it, and we have to solve it according to the law.

Balen dismissed accusations that the Fund is moving too slowly and hit back with an accusation of his own aimed at the political scene.

We understand citizens’ concern, but we also have to say there is a great deal of populism here, sweeping claims, politicking.

The buried portion is a harder problem. According to Balen, the Fund contacted around seventy hazardous waste landfills and incinerators across the European Union to determine where such material could even be processed and at what cost. The chosen cleanup method will be presented to citizens’ associations in September, and the operation itself is expected to take a year to a year and a half.

Milanovic Demands Work Start Immediately

Croatian President Zoran Milanovic commented on the case for the first time and said procedure must not be used as an excuse.

The illegal, indeed criminal, dumping of hazardous waste in Lika, around Gospic, must urgently start being cleaned up.

His question about accountability goes beyond the contractors.

Lika, and Croatia as a whole, must get an answer: why has no one been punished to this day for the illegal dumping of hazardous waste, and why did the responsible state institutions allow it in silence?

He told the government and the relevant ministries that there had been enough time for explanations: “All the explanations the government and relevant ministries have offered so far can no longer be tolerated. I am calling on them to act immediately and protect the health of the people of Lika.”

The No-Confidence Vote and the Math in Parliament

SDP and Most have announced they will move to unseat the government. SDP leader Sinisa Hajdas Doncic confirmed the party’s position in a Facebook post, after MP Mihael Zmajlovic presented four possible waste removal models at a press conference.

The question is whether the same rule will apply to everyone in Croatia.

Launching a no-confidence procedure requires the signatures of one fifth of the members of the Croatian Parliament (Sabor). The fall session opens in mid-September, and the no-confidence vote itself will have to take place within a month, meaning by mid-October at the latest. The green-left Mozemo platform is demanding a public hearing of those responsible, and the parliamentary Environmental Protection Committee, chaired by Dusica Radojcic, has scheduled a session on the issue in Gospic.

The calendar leaves no room for delay: August 25 for the bid opening, September for choosing the cleanup method, mid-October for the confidence vote on the government. The first deadline that actually changes anything on the ground is the nearest one, since it is the only one after which the machines can move in.