I do not know whether it is too late now to answer, because you asked this 2 months ago, but I will answer so others can know this informations when traveling to Croatia with drone.
When you come to Croatia and carry one drone with you as personal luggage (privately), then there is no customs procedures and no costs. So if you have one drone and it looks used, you will not have any problems with customs. Drone in used conditions indicates that it is your personal luggage (not commercial import).
In Croatia, it is not necessary to have a confirmation/certificate of ownership, and also you don't need a permit to carry a drone. But you must have a license to fly and you must have permission to
take photos or film from the air (if drone used for recording).
If you are not from Croatia, in practice, you will not have a problem if you're shooting and recording without a permission. No one will know whether you're recording or just fly. If you publish photos and videos on the Internet (I'm assuming you will do it later from USA when you are back home), surely you you will not be punished for recording without permission, because this law applies only in Croatia (and Europe). Acctually that is problem only for Croatian residents because when someone from Croatia publish aerial photos on the internet, than authorities can find him and posted footage on the Internet is proof that he was filming from air without permission.
License to fly - it is easy to get it from Agency for Civil Aviation. Here is link:
http://www.ccaa.hr/english/faq-uas_377/ You must download form, fill out a form, take photo of your drone and send it all to them by mail. There are contact informations:
http://www.ccaa.hr/english/contacts_10/
With the license for basic category, you can fly anywhere but not above the people, buildings/houses near the airport, and etc. If you want to fly above people, you must have drone parachute and drone with minimal 6 engines (hexacopter or octocopter). You can't fly above people with DJI Phantom (quadcopter). For more informations and help with this you can also contact
Croatian DJI distributor
But also, if you fly without any licence, probably you will not have any problems. This is fact:
- less than 100 people in Croatia have a license to fly, but there are certainly several thousand of DJI pilots
- thousands of people are using DJI drones in Croatia, but only a few of them get a penalty for flying without permission
So if you watch what you're doing, if you do not do some stupid things, you are not attracting undue attention to places where there are a lot of people, there is 99,99% chance that you will not have any problems even if you don't have any licence and permission.
