Croatia has become the eighth European country to allow Full Self-Driving (Supervised) on public roads. The State Office for Metrology — Državni zavod za mjeriteljstvo, the body that handles vehicle homologation in Croatia — signed the approval on 28 September 2026, and Tesla's European account announced it the next day: "FSD Supervised now approved in Croatia. Rollout will begin soon."

Eighteen days earlier the same office had told Croatian media the opposite.

The reversal

On 10 September the DZM said the Dutch approval "had not yet been accepted", and that a decision was unlikely before the question had been discussed further at EU level. That is the position Czechia held in July, that Ireland still holds, and that Germany, France, Italy and Spain have held all year.

Asked about the change, the office said it had never opposed recognising the Dutch approval and had simply been exercising caution. It gave no further explanation.

What Croatia actually recognised

Croatia did not approve FSD. It accepted somebody else's approval.

On 10 April 2026 the Dutch vehicle authority, the RDW, issued a provisional type approval for FSD Supervised under Article 39 of Regulation (EU) 2018/858 — the clause reserved for vehicle technology that does not yet fit the harmonised European rulebook. An Article 39 exemption is national and does not travel, so every other member state decides separately whether to honour it. Croatia has now done so, as Czechia did on 21 September.

That also fixes the limits. FSD Supervised is an SAE Level 2 system: the driver watches the road, monitors what the car is doing, and stays responsible for the drive. The product name describes an ambition, not the legal status of the vehicle.

Where FSD Supervised now stands in Europe

Country Approved
Netherlands 10 April 2026
Lithuania May 2026
Estonia May 2026
Denmark June 2026
Belgium June 2026
Slovenia 7 September 2026
Czechia 21 September 2026
Croatia 28 September 2026

September did what ten months of EU procedure did not

Three of the eight approvals arrived in the past three weeks. Before Slovenia on 7 September the map had not moved since June — a two-month standstill — and the countries filling it in now are the ones that had publicly said they would wait.

The reason is the calendar they were waiting on. The bloc-wide decision Tesla actually wants has slipped from October to December on the technical committee's agenda. Every slip makes the national route more attractive to a regulator whose owners can see the car across the border doing something theirs cannot, and Croatia's about-face is the clearest case of it so far.

Poland is the counter-example worth keeping in view. Tesla asked Warsaw to recognise the Dutch file back in April, and Poland is still not on the list. Being in talks is not an approval.

What Croatian owners get, and when

Tesla said the rollout would begin "soon", with reporting pointing to later the same week. Paying is not the only requirement. In Czechia the launch covered cars with the Hardware 4 (AI4) computer only — broadly those delivered from mid-2023 — and Tesla has not said whether Croatia differs. No Croatian pricing has been published.