This year’s summer tourist season, which ran from June 15 to September 15, was a very diverse season in terms of the number of consular cases. In the summer period, three major international sporting events took place in Europe – the Summer Olympic and Summer Paralympic Games in Paris and the soccer EURO in Germany. Czech citizens were there as well as our diplomats, who provided them with consular assistance.
“I am very happy that at the beginning of the summer season, the operation of the unified emergency line for the whole of Europe was also launched, and at the same time the DROZD mobile application was launched. This puts the Czech Republic among the states that provide their citizens with very extensive and above-standard consular assistance,” said Minister Lipavský.
Croatia continues to have the highest number of visitors with roughly the same number of Czech tourists as last year. According to estimates, about 800,000 Czechs visited Croatia this summer. In recent years, Poland has emerged as a newly discovered destination, where, however, individual tourism prevails.
To ensure this year’s summer tourist season, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has established a consular office, the operation of which, with the presence of a consular officer on site, is key to managing the onslaught in tourist-exposed localities. This year, it was again a consular office in Rijeka and Split, Croatia, and in Burgas, Bulgaria. We also strengthened the honorary consulate in Barcelona, Spain. In addition to the traditionally established consular offices, reinforcements were sent to Paris this year for the duration of the Summer Olympic Games.
In Bulgaria and Croatia, dispatched Czech police officers were again active as part of joint patrols. As in last year’s tourist season, members of the Police of the Czech Republic cooperated with Croatian colleagues in Šibenik, Omiš and Vodice and with Bulgarian colleagues in Nesebar and Primorsk. They were helpful in solving a number of consular cases, especially loss of documents, theft and traffic accidents. At the same time, they mediated quick contact with local police authorities or rescuers. The work of liaison officers of the Police of the Czech Republic has long been very positively evaluated by Czech tourists on site and by partner authorities.
In mid-June, the first phase of the emergency line project of the Consular Operations and Information Center of the MFA was launched, replacing the emergency lines of fifty embassies in Europe for the public (tel. +420 222 420 222). Over a thousand calls were made to the emergency line from June 17 to September 15, 2024. During the summer of 2024, the information line for trips abroad continued to function (tel. +420 222 264 222), where operators answered general questions from citizens. A total of 2,221 calls were processed on this line in the summer tourist season.
The DROZD system is absolutely fundamental from the point of view of timely informing Czech citizens during their travels. The number of registered citizens is increasing rapidly. In this summer season, 18,314 SMS and 12,345 e-mails were sent through the DROZD system, the number of registered travelers was 186,554. During the 2024 summer season, the largest number of registrations was for Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia, Croatia, Italy, Bulgaria, Spain, Austria and Albania.
“At the beginning of the season, in cooperation with the digital and information agency DIA, we launched a new mobile version of DROZD within the Portal application citizen. The application not only enables registration on a mobile phone, but also displays basic data on the given destinations. We are currently working on improving it so that it is possible to download data for offline use,” said Martin Smolek, senior director of the legal and consular section, regarding the DROZD system.
