Between 2022 and 2024, an estimated 35,000 tonnes of waste — some of it hazardous — was illegally buried at sites in Gospić, a town in Croatia's mountainous Lika region. Lorries arrived at night, passing within 50 metres of residents' homes. Local authorities and police failed to intervene. Residents started photographing the trucks themselves. The Croatian Institute of Public Health confirmed PFAS forever chemicals in nearby groundwater samples. Elevated concentrations of copper and lead were also found in soil. Residents no longer trust official assurances about drinking water safety and have switched to buying bottled water. The contamination pattern — synthetic chemicals designed to persist indefinitely — means the damage deepens with every month of inaction. In February 2025, Europol-supported arrests netted 13 suspects. The two principal Croatian nationals had orchestrated illegal hazardous waste imports from Italy, Slovenia, and Germany, generating an estimated €4 million in profit by falsifying recycling documents to avoid proper disposal costs. The business model is straightforward extraction: pocket the fees, dump the liability on a community with no resources to fight back. Eighteen months after the arrests, the waste remains in place. No remediation has begun. The government has opened two public procurement procedures for waste removal, but deadlines and timelines are absent. Željka Šikić, whose home sits on the first road next to the dump, cannot sell her property and cannot afford to leave. The state has effectively socialised the costs of a private crime. The failure in Gospić catalysed a national movement. Šikić and 16 other residents formed "Gospić Is Our Home," which rapidly expanded as communities across Croatia reported similar illegal dumping. On 5 September, an estimated 40,000 people marched through Zagreb to the parliament — one of the largest environmental protests in Croatian history. The group demands comprehensive remediation, urgent waste removal, and inclusion of all known waste hotspots in a national waste strategy. The problem scales far beyond Croatia. The United Nations estimates 15–30% of EU waste shipments are illegal. The same structural incentive operates everywhere: proper waste treatment is expensive, enforcement is weak, and the communities that absorb the dumping are invariably those with the least political power. Criminal networks exploit the gap between regulatory ambition and enforcement capacity across the EU's waste-shipment framework. The campaign group now plans to take its case to the European Parliament. "We've lost so much time, we don't have time for more promises," says campaign member Ivana Rukavina Sarić. "We want clear information, clear deadlines and clear action." The Croatian government did not respond to a request for comment.
