Croatia vs Italy

About this relationship

Italy and Croatia face each other across the narrow waters of the Adriatic Sea, a proximity that has produced one of Europe's more complicated twentieth-century territorial and ethnic histories. Following the First World War, the 1920 Treaty of Rapallo assigned Istria, the city of Zara (Zadar) and other Adriatic territories with mixed Italian and Slavic populations to Italy; that arrangement was reversed after the Second World War, when the territories passed to Yugoslavia, triggering the large-scale flight and expulsion of ethnic Italians from Istria and Dalmatia between the 1940s and early 1950s, an exodus estimated to have involved several hundred thousand people and accompanied by the killings known as the foibe massacres. The unresolved status of the city of Trieste was finally settled between Italy and Yugoslavia by the 1975 Treaty of Osimo, which fixed the border and guaranteed the rights of the remaining Italian minority in Istria, protections Croatia inherited and has continued to honor since Yugoslavia's dissolution.

Italy was among the first states to recognize Croatian independence, extending recognition in January 1992 alongside Germany as part of a coordinated European response, and it subsequently became one of the strongest European advocates for Croatia's integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions, backing Croatia's NATO accession in 2009 and its European Union membership, achieved in July 2013. High-level contact has remained frequent in the mid-2020s: Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have held repeated bilateral meetings, including talks in Rome in late 2025 at which Plenković publicly reaffirmed the countries' "excellent bilateral relations" and the two leaders discussed deepening economic cooperation, migration management and continued support for further Balkan EU enlargement.

Italy is Croatia's largest single trading partner, a position both governments have repeatedly highlighted in official statements; Plenković has cited total bilateral trade at approximately nine billion euros, spanning manufacturing, agri-food products, tourism-linked services and energy. Italian firms are significant investors in Croatian tourism, manufacturing and financial services, while Croatian exports to Italy include machinery, textiles, food products and energy-related goods; the two economies are further linked through Adriatic shipping routes, ferry connections and joint infrastructure projects tied to the wider Trans-European Transport Network. Croatia's January 2023 adoption of the euro and entry into the Schengen area removed remaining currency and border friction for the substantial cross-border commerce and tourism flows between the two countries.

Security cooperation between Italy and Croatia operates through NATO, of which both are members, and through European Union frameworks addressing Adriatic and Mediterranean migration, with the two countries' coast guards and naval forces coordinating on search-and-rescue operations and the monitoring of irregular migration routes across the Adriatic. Both governments participate in European Union efforts to stabilize the Western Balkans and have generally aligned positions on regional enlargement policy, viewing Croatia's own 2013 accession as a template for its neighbors. Coordinated patrols and information-sharing arrangements have also addressed smuggling and environmental protection in the shared Adriatic maritime space.

Cultural and human links are extensive and mutually reinforcing: an ethnic Italian minority remains concentrated in Istria and parts of coastal Croatia, protected under Croatian law and the legacy of the Osimo treaty, while a small Croatian-speaking minority, the Molise Croats, has maintained a distinct language and identity in southern Italy since settling there in the sixteenth century. Millions of Italian tourists visit the Croatian Adriatic coast each year, making Italy one of the largest sources of foreign visitors to Croatia, and academic, artistic and municipal twinning exchanges between Adriatic cities on both shores remain active. As of 2025-2026, Italy-Croatia relations are marked by close economic integration, converging positions on EU enlargement and a shared, carefully managed memory of a difficult common past.