Cross-border placement of a child including foster family

1 Which authority is to be consulted and to give prior consent before the cross-border placement of a child within your territory?

Before the cross-border placement of a child in the territory of the Republic of Croatia, the Ministry of Labour, Pension System, Family and Social Policy (Ministarstvo rada, mirovinskoga sustava, obitelji i socijalne politike) must first be consulted and its consent obtained. The Commission for establishing compliance with the conditions for the cross-border placement of children and examining individual requests for the granting of prior consent for the cross-border placement of a child within the territory of the Republic of Croatia (Povjerenstvo za utvrđivanje uvjeta za prekogranični smještaj djece te razmatranje pojedinačnih zahtjeva za davanje prethodnog pristanka za prekogranični smještaj djece na području Republike Hrvatske) works within the Ministry to achieve this aim.

2 Please describe shortly the procedure for consultation and the obtaining of consent (including required documents, deadlines, modalities of the procedure, and other relevant details) for cross-border placement of children within your territory.

The Ministry of Labour, Pension System, Family and Social Policy, being the Central Authority for actions pursuant to Council Regulation (EU) 2019/1111, established the five-member Commission for establishing compliance with the conditions for the cross-border placement of children and examining individual requests for the granting of prior consent for the cross-border placement of a child within the territory of the Republic of Croatia. The Commission meets to take individual decisions on the basis of requests received.

A request is submitted, accompanied by a comprehensive report on the child with the opinion and conclusion of the expert team on cross-border placement, including medical documentation and the reasons for the cross-border placement, the name of the service provider with which placement is sought, details of the planned start and end date of the placement, a declaration by the service provider agreeing to provide the service to the child and to bear all the child’s travel (arrival and departure) and subsistence costs, health insurance and education costs, a declaration by the child giving consent for the cross-border placement and confirming that he or she is aware of the placement programme, a declaration by the requesting State guaranteeing that the representative of the service provider will be authorised to represent the child for the purpose of registering his or her temporary stay, as well as to take any action necessary to protect the child, details of the authority of the requesting State which is competent to take decisions on placement, court decisions issued in respect of the child (e.g. decisions on parental custody of the child, etc.) and other documentation the requesting State deems relevant for carrying out this procedure.

Documents are provided in the original in the language of the requesting State, accompanied by a translation into Croatian. The procedure is urgent, so the Commission makes a determination immediately after having examined the request and the supporting documents. On the basis of that determination, the Ministry of Labour, Pension System, Family and Social Policy adopts a final decision to grant or deny a request for prior consent for cross-border placement within the territory of the Republic of Croatia.

3 Has your Member State decided that consent is not required for cross-border placements of children within your territory where the child is to be placed with certain categories of close relatives? If yes, what are the categories of close relatives?

Under Article 82 of Council Regulation (EU) 2019/1111, no consent is needed from Croatia where the child is to be placed with a parent or close relative. For the purposes of Article 82(2) of Council Regulation (EU) 2019/1111, grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers/half-brothers, sisters/half-sisters, and children of siblings/half-siblings are considered as close relatives.

4 Does your Member State have in place any agreements or arrangements for simplifying the consultation procedure for obtaining consent for the cross-border placement of children?

Croatia does not have in place any agreements or arrangements for simplifying the consultation procedure for obtaining consent for the cross-border placement of children.