Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Saturday that vaccination against COVID-19 would not be mandatory for anyone and that he believed Croatian citizens were reasonable, wise and informed.

“We can’t introduce mandatory vaccination because we said at the beginning that we wouldn’t,” he told the press.

Plenkovic said he did not think there was anyone in the country who did not know that COVID had existed for 18 months now and that over 8,000 people in Croatia and four million in the world died as a result.

He said that despite the rise in infections, Croatia did not plan to impose tough restrictions.