Liberland

What Liberland is

Liberland, formally the Free Republic of Liberland, is an aspiring state proclaimed on 13 April 2015 by the Czech politician Vít Jedlička. It has a constitution, a provisional government with a president and ministers, a congress elected by its citizens on its own blockchain, a flag and a unit of account, the Liberland merit. No member of the United Nations recognises it, and it counts among the best-known micronations in the world. Its motto is “To Live and Let Live”.

Where Liberland is

The territory is Gornja Siga, a wooded floodplain of about seven square kilometres on the western bank of the Danube between Croatia and Serbia. Because of an unresolved border dispute, Serbia does not claim the parcel and Croatia holds that it belongs to Serbia, which left it administered by neither state; Liberland’s founders treat it as terra nullius, land belonging to no one. The nearest village is Zmajevac in Croatia, about six kilometres away, and the nearest airports are Osijek in Croatia, Belgrade and Budapest.

How Liberland is governed

Liberland’s constitution is written to protect individual freedom and to constrain the growth of government, and the project experiments with an open approach to lawmaking in which citizens take part directly. Its government is provisional, headed by a president and four ministers, with a Congress and a Senate; elections and much of its decision-making run on the Liberland blockchain, where citizens vote and hold the merit. The project describes itself as the first republic governed on-chain.

Citizenship and living in Liberland

Liberland grants citizenship to applicants who accept its principles and contribute to the project; it keeps a roll of registered citizens, a far larger number of applications, and an e-residency open to anyone. Settlement on the ground has been the harder part. Croatia controls the approaches and for years turned visitors back; since August 2023 Liberland reports a permanent group of settlers on the territory and a border crossing agreed with the Croatian police, while its supporters have built a community nearby in Apatin, on the Serbian side of the river, with a business incubator in the town’s free trade zone.

How Liberland came about

The parcel became available through the border dispute that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia: Croatia claims the border along the old cadastral line, Serbia along the river’s present course, leaving pockets on each bank that one side claims and the other declines. Jedlička, then active in the Czech Free Citizens Party, proclaimed Liberland on the largest of the pockets on the western bank in April 2015 and invited the world to apply for citizenship; hundreds of thousands did within weeks. In the years since, the project has built a network of representative offices abroad, held its first on-chain elections and hosted an annual gathering on the Serbian side of the river.