On a Saturday in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered to voice public fury over government inaction on a year-long illegal hazardous waste scandal that has sparked widespread fears of irreversible environmental damage across the central European nation, a member of the European Union. The crisis, centered in the small central Croatian town of Gospic, has amplified growing public backlash against conservative Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and his administration, which has spent weeks facing mounting pressure over its slow response to the dumped toxic materials.
The scandal first came to light in February of last year, when Croatian national police and Europol, the European Union’s cross-border law enforcement agency, announced the arrest of 13 suspects connected to a racket that illegally imported and disposed of thousands of tons of hazardous waste across Croatia. At the time of the arrests, Europol confirmed the criminal network had pulled in at least 4 million euros (equivalent to roughly $4.2 million) in illegal profits from the operation.
More than 12 months after the initial bust, approximately 37,000 metric tons of toxic waste — equal to 40,000 U.S. tons — remain buried at an abandoned industrial site in Gospic, a town of just 12,000 people located adjacent to a protected nature park famous for its pristine forests, lakes, and rivers. The waste stockpile includes discarded electronic components, microplastics, construction debris, and even untreated medical waste, leaving local residents terrified of long-term health risks from contamination.
Last month, Croatia’s national anti-corruption agency USKOK published an independent expert assessment that confirmed elevated concentrations of toxic heavy metals in the site’s soil, and detected PFAS “forever chemicals” — a class of persistent toxic compounds linked to cancer and developmental harm — in local groundwater supplies. Despite these findings, not a single kilogram of hazardous material has been removed from the site more than a year after the scandal broke, according to organizers of the mass protest.
Vjekoslav Busic, a spokesperson for the grassroots group *Gospic Is Our Home* that organized the demonstration, noted local residents had been flagging suspicious illegal activity at the site as early as 2023, yet their repeated warnings went unanswered by authorities. Ivan Rittinger, a Gospic resident who joined the protest, rejected official framing of the crisis as an unforeseen tragedy, arguing the operation was a deliberate criminal enterprise. “Someone made money out of it and someone was paid to look the other way,” Rittinger said. “This is not a tragedy. This is a crime.”
Demonstrators put forward two core demands for Croatian leaders: first, that authorities release a detailed, time-bound remediation plan to fully and permanently clean up the contaminated site on an urgent timeline, and second, that the country implement an immediate ban on all hazardous waste imports. Protesters gathered in Zagreb’s main square, waving Croatian national flags and carrying signs reading “When if not now” and “The lungs of Croatia have trouble breathing.”
Zeljka Sikic, a Gospic resident who addressed the crowd, thanked attendees for showing their support, saying “we have been handed over to eco-mafia.” Zagreb resident Suzane Maria Flander, who joined the demonstration, emphasized the fundamental nature of the protesters’ demands: “It’s a basic human right to have clean soil, clean water and clean air.”
USKOK is currently investigating a domestic Croatian company alleged to be the main entity behind the illegal dumping scheme, which is suspected of burying imported toxic waste at dozens of sites across the country, with the single largest stockpile located in Gospic. According to Europol’s initial investigation, most of the waste dumped in Gospic was trafficked into Croatia from other EU member states: Italy, Slovenia, and Germany.
In response to public pressure, Plenkovic’s government has stated that formal investigations are active, and initial preparations for waste removal are underway. Officials have also claimed that multiple independent rounds of water and soil testing found no evidence of widespread contamination outside the immediate dump site, and noted that a contractor has been selected to begin partial waste removal while a long-term remediation plan is finalized, with temporary covering of the site planned to prevent rainwater from spreading toxins.
Prime Minister Plenkovic has gone further, accusing political opposition groups of stoking public panic over the scandal to advance their own electoral goals. While independent experts confirm the contamination is currently concentrated at the local level, they have issued urgent warnings that the region’s unique karst geography — characterized by porous, loose soil and an extensive network of connected rivers — could allow toxins from the site to leach into water systems that eventually flow to the Adriatic Sea, creating a much larger regional environmental risk.