Report on the Performance of Activities of the National Preventive Mechanism for 2016 Namely, after several years marked by a drop in the number of international protection applicants in the Republic of Croatia, as STRUCTURE OF DECISIONS ON a consequence of large migratory INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION movements, in 2016, this number went 1119 through a dramatic increase of 957% in 793 98 42 47 133 INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION APPLICANTS ACCORDING TO NATIONALITY Turkey 5% Algeria 6% Other 14% Afghanistan 31% Iran 6% Pakistan 8% Syria 15% Iraq 15% comparison to 2015. At the same time, along with reduction in the number of discontinued procedures (50.13%), there was an increase in the number of procedures within which application has not been decided upon, as a result of which relation between the number of discontinued, positive and negative decisions may be considerably altered. Increased number of cases within which a decision has not been reached as well as general increase in the number of submitted applications, is an issue that may be considered from the perspective of amendments to the Act on International and Temporary Protection, pursuant to which and contrary to the Asylum Act, persons are granted the status of international protection applicants on the date of announcing their intention to do so, not on the date of submitting their application. More specifically, pursuant to the Asylum Act, persons who express their intention to seek asylum (international protection), remain under the status of irregular migrants until they have submitted their application and thus initiated an administrative procedure. Early granting of the applicant status implies the obligation to pass decisions on discontinuation not only for those who leave the Centre before the decision has been reached, but also for all those who do not even come to the Reception Centre. Such amendments to legal regulations have resulted not only in insufficient numbers of the Ministry of the Interior’s staff capable of passing decisions, steeply increased number of applicants, but also prolongation of time necessary for the decision to be reached as well as rise in the number of unresolved applications. If we take into account data on the number of applicants with respect to the place where they announced their intention to apply for international protection (705 persons in the Airport Police Station Pleso, 306 persons in Border Police Station Slavonski Brod after closure of the socalled Balkan Route, and 31 persons in Osijek-Baranja and Vukovar-Srijem Police 45