History of the Customs Administration

The customs service of the Republic of Croatia has a long history, dating 8 centuries back, as is testified by one of the oldest original customs books in Europe – the Ragusan Customs Statute (Liber statutorum doane Ragusii) from the 13^th century.
 
The Croatian Dubrovnik (Ragusa) was established in the first half of the 7^th century and started to develop very early as a city with a wide autonomy, only to become an independent city state later on.
Dubrovnik of that time had an almost unrestricted and free movement of goods, people and money, while customs duties were one of the key sources of revenues for the city. The vital source for studying the history of Dubrovnik/Ragusa is the Dubrovnik Archive consisting of 77 series, with the first documents dating from 1022. One of the oldest among them is the treaty between Dubrovnik and Bulgarian Emperor Michael Asen from 1253, written in Croatian, so the names of officials and noble families are also in the Croatian form. Soon after that important document, the Dubrovnik City Statute was adopted in 1272, which also included certain customs provisions. Many other customs provisions had existed and were implemented even earlier, but since they had been voted-in in different periods and were included in different texts, they were sometimes unclear or even contradictory. For that reason, five years after having adopted the Dubrovnik City Statute, on 28 September 1277, Dubrovnik’s Rector Marko Justiniani, the Small and Great Council, with the approval of the commoners, published the complete list of customs provisions gathered in a separate collection - Liber statutorum doane.

The Dubrovnik Customs Statute represents one of the oldest original customs books in Europe, which – along with the later additions – is found as the first book of the 35^th series called “Customs and Excise Duties” (dohana), on 74 pages, with the last one being taped to the cover. Liber statutorum doane has several parts and the central part includes 39 provisions.

In the ancient Ragusa, customs duties were determined according to the value of goods (ad valorem), and only in rare cases according to the weight of goods and were mostly fiscal in nature. The Dubrovnik Customs Statute identifies import, export, transit, and even preferential duties, which were not protectionist, except occasionally for agricultural products. There were also import bans on certain products, while duty was not paid if the purchased goods were for personal use only. The goods were not allowed to be loaded to the means of transport before reporting it to a customs office and paying a duty, and before leaving Dubrovnik with the goods, each merchant had to submit to the customs office a list of goods (customs declaration), swearing that all the data entered in the customs declaration were authentic. It was precisely defined that all the goods had to be reported to a customs office and the duty paid, with cash fines and confiscations as penalties for not complying. General fines for offenders were also defined and issued in cases when no other fines were prescribed in any of the other provisions for a specific violation. According to the Dubrovnik Customs Statute, at start the duty payers had the possibility to use deferred payment up to one month. However, this provision was changed in 1332, after which duties had to be paid immediately.