President Zoran Milanovic said on Thursday that the government-sponsored amendments to the Act on the Protection of the Population from Infectious Diseases, envisaging fines for persons not complying with the COVID-19 certificate mandate, "are not a law, but an act of terrorising."

Asked if the head of his office, Orsat Miljenic, would be held accountable because the Office of the President does not check its visitors’ COVID-19 certificates, Milanovic said that Miljenic would not be held to account because he was the one in charge.

“I am the responsible person, I run the military. You cannot bypass the military when arriving at the Office of the President,” Milanovic said, adding that this was not so by accident but precisely to prevent “the harassment of the president by petty thieves and petty politicians”.

He added that one visits the Office of the President solely at its invitation.

Commenting on increasingly frequent reports that vaccination would be made mandatory at EU level, Milanovic said that that made no sense, was not based on science, was unjustified and wrong.