Since 15 September, every Croatian webshop that sells alcohol has to verify the customer’s age through e-Građani, the state’s digital identity system. It is in Article 11.a of the Trade Act, and the law is explicit: the check runs through e-Građani and nothing else. If the customer does not complete it, the shop must refuse the sale. A company that sells without the check faces a fine of 5,000 to 39,810 euros.
We covered what the law requires and how the integration works. This time we asked the ministry that built the system how it is going.
The Numbers
On 24 September we sent freedom of information requests to the Ministry of Justice, Public Administration and Digital Transformation and to the Ministry of Economy. The first answered on 8 October, one day inside the deadline. Every number below comes from that reply, linked at the end.
- Development cost 30,000 euros including VAT. It was not a separate project: Ericsson Nikola Tesla built it under the existing maintenance contract for the m-Građani platform, signed on 9 March 2026.
- Running it is estimated at 6,000 euros a year.
- The development was paid from NPOO, Croatia’s share of the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility.
- By 25 September, 109 merchants had registered for access and 70 were live.
- Together they had started 9,814 age checks. 2,391 were completed: 24 percent.
Three out of four customers who reached the check did not get through it. The reply does not say why, and we will not guess: some gave up, some had technical trouble, some probably never had the right credentials. For a shop, the result matters more than the reason. A 76 percent drop at one checkout step is something you would normally fix or remove. Here the step is mandatory.
Spread over the checks completed so far, the development cost comes to about 12.50 euros per verified customer. That will fall with volume, but it is worth knowing.
Buyers From Other EU Countries
We also asked whether the service accepts electronic identities from other EU member states under the eIDAS Regulation. The answer is technically precise. The m-Građani backend does not handle eIDAS itself. It relies on NIAS, the national identification system run by FINA, which is also Croatia’s eIDAS node, and foreign eIDs are recognised there. The infrastructure exists. What is missing, in the ministry’s words, is the business logic for users from other member states, planned by the end of 2026.
Date of birth is one of the four mandatory attributes in the eIDAS minimum dataset, so the one thing an age check needs already arrives with every foreign login. The missing step is reading that date. The obligation for shops did not wait for it.
A separate NIAS upgrade worth 3.53 million euros, most of it funded by the EU and running from March 2026 to March 2029, lists the cross-border use of eIDs from other member states among its goals.
What It Means in Practice
A winery in Slavonia gets an order from a customer in Graz. The law says nothing about where the customer lives, only that the check runs through e-Građani, and e-Građani cannot verify that customer. The industry has settled on checking only Croatian delivery addresses, which is sensible but is not written in the law. The shop either relies on a reading the ministry has never confirmed, or loses the sale.
An Austrian or German webshop sells the same bottle to the same customer, in Graz or in Zagreb, with no such obligation. As far as we can see in the EU’s TRIS database, where member states notify technical rules for online services before adopting them, Croatia did not notify this one. The same is true of the anchor price rules.
On complaints from merchants who cannot verify their customers, the ministry says it only receives technical integration questions, and it forwarded that part of our request to the Ministry of Economy. That ministry had not answered our own requests by the 9 October deadline. For now, the question of who is responsible for a shop that cannot legally complete a sale has no clear owner. We will publish any answers when they arrive.
What It Means for You
If you sell alcohol online from Croatia, watch your own completion rate: the share of buyers who start the check and finish it. If it is close to the national 24 percent, the problem is not your shop alone, but you can still reduce the drop. Explain the step before checkout, test it on a phone, and for deliveries abroad keep the previous flow only with the ministry’s confirmation in writing. If you want us to look at your checkout, book a 20-minute call. If you do not need us, we will tell you.
Documents: reply of the Ministry of Justice, Public Administration and Digital Transformation, 8 October 2026 (PDF, Croatian) and partial transfer of the request to the Ministry of Economy (PDF, Croatian).