Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Friday that people who did not get vaccinated against COVID-19 would not be penalised as vaccination was not mandatory, but that the utmost would continue to be done to increase the vaccination rate.

“We can’t penalise people for something that is not mandatory under the law. No country in the EU has declared vaccination mandatory… We have been pursuing a positive approach the whole time,” Plenkovic told the press in Dubrovnik.

He said he would have to analyse more thoroughly why a part of the population hesitated or trusted information that prevented them from getting vaccinated.

People should be encouraged to get vaccinated because it’s not in our interest for a hotspot to occur, for Croatia to be red-listed and for the tourist season to end, he added.

Plenkovic said vaccination was slowing down in other countries as well but that there was a large pool of those unprotected in Croatia. There’s a difference when it slows down at 59% or at 44% of those vaccinated, he added.