Dubrovnik Airport, the gateway to Croatia's most popular walled city, has been ordered to hand back roughly €22 million of EU funding after auditors flagged irregularities in public procurement procedures tied to its big renovation.
The renovation dates back about 13 years and was one of Croatia's flagship EU-backed infrastructure projects, with a total price tag of around €230 million — nearly €160 million of it covered by non-refundable European grants. The airport now has to return about 14% of that grant, according to director Viktor Šober, who told national broadcaster HRT that the penalties relate to how major contracts were tendered and signed, mostly between 2013 and 2017.
The most eye-catching problem involves an aircraft fuel supply system on the airport apron, meant to pump JET A-1 aviation fuel to parked planes. Dubrovnik's mayor, Mato Franković, said ten procurement procedures were penalised and claimed the wrong pipes were installed altogether — sewage pipes in place of aviation fuel pipes. The result: the underground fuel hydrant system doesn't work, and the airport can't use a chunk of infrastructure it paid for. An international specialist firm has been brought in to assess the underground network, though Šober admitted the early findings were not encouraging.
There's also a political fallout trail. The European Public Prosecutor's Office confirmed it received information from Croatian authorities in 2022 but declined to take the case, citing the limits of its temporal jurisdiction. Meanwhile, former airport director Roko Tolić — now executive director of Airports of Montenegro — pushed back on the blame, noting the building permit for the fuel system was issued on 3 September 2018, seven months after he left the job, with construction running through 2019. He says questions about whether the pipes match the approved project should be settled through technical inspection involving all parties responsible for the build.
For travellers, the immediate impact is minimal — flights in and out of Dubrovnik operate normally, and aircraft refuelling there is handled by regular tanker trucks rather than a hydrant system. The real story is financial and political: a €22 million hole in the accounts of Croatia's busiest leisure airport during peak season, with the possibility of further costs depending on what the technical assessment finds. Anyone flying to Dubrovnik this summer shouldn't change plans, but it's a reminder that even glossy holiday gateways can carry messy paperwork behind the scenes.
