Daniel Jackson | We're Building a New Country in Europe

Timothy Allen: What's interesting about Verdis is that I only heard about it recently and I don't know why that is, because, like I say, we've been following Liberland for a long time and it popped up on TikTok recently and I thought, oh, someone's doing another kind of Liberland type thing. And then I looked into it, it was like, actually no, you've been doing it about five years.

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, that's correct. I mean, I think when it comes to Verdis, we did start our first settlement in October 2023, so not far after Liberland. But that was done entirely on our own funds. So we had no media presence, anything like that. It was just us going down on our own funds, trying to create a settlement, trying to make Verdis a reality, which we believe we did. And after the issues that we faced with Croatian authorities, things went a bit quiet for a while. We didn't really get much coverage on it. And it was only until, I'd say, this time last year that we suddenly gained a lot of media attention, because I had been chased again by the Croatian police and that had caught on local media in Serbia, then leading to British media and onto American media, and ever since then it blew up. But that's why I think even though Verdis has existed for quite a long time, people have only heard about it quite recently, at least within the past year. Before that, not many people knew about it at all. But we're very committed to what we're doing.

Timothy Allen: I assume it was inspired initially by Liberland, is that right?

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, it was inspired a bit by Liberland. But while we do like to build a relationship with Liberland and work with Liberland, we do have very different ideologies. Of course we share a lot of the same values, but the way that we plan our governance is a lot more different compared to Liberland. So that's the reason why we're different. We're not as based on things like blockchain, whereas Liberland is, but Liberland are our neighbours and we love to work with them when we can.

Timothy Allen: That's interesting, then we'll go into that in a minute. I'd quite like to learn a little bit more about you first. You're Australian, right? And you don't have a hugely Australian accent, I know.

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, so I was born in Australia, I lived there for 17 years. I'm 21 years old now. But my parents are British originally, both born and raised in the UK. And I sort of always retained a British accent, even though I never went to school in England or anything like that. When I was 17, I moved to England. And as of the end of last year, I am now in Serbia.

Timothy Allen: Right. So what brings someone like yourself to the idea, the concept of wanting to start your own country, I suppose?

Daniel Jackson: I would say there's not a single reason for it. There's many reasons. With Verdis, I had initially created it more based off of things like the environment and so on. Of course, you can do that in your own countries. But we wanted to maybe do things a little bit different. And as a country dedicated to these sort of values, it can make maybe a bigger difference than a country that just has a few departments dedicated towards it. And that was just an idea back when I was around 2014, that's when I had initially taken some inspiration from Liberland. But in 2023, when I was doing some humanitarian aid with some friends, we actually came up with some proper goals for Verdis. We actually thought, let's bring this thing back, let's set up a cabinet, a government, and let's create a state where it's, how do I put it, it's a fresh start. We can test new systems of governance, everything like that. There's so many different things we can do as a small country.

Timothy Allen: Did you by any chance look into other terra nullius around the world? Because as far as I know, you've got a bit of land in Chad, on the border with Chad, haven't you, out in the desert there, that's unclaimed, similar thing. And other than that, there's not a huge choice.

Daniel Jackson: No, there's not much selection nowadays.

Timothy Allen: So did you think about other places?

Daniel Jackson: Not necessarily, no, because I think with the Balkans, while of course there can be many issues here, where Verdis is located, even though it's a very small country, it's much smaller than even Liberland. Liberland is the size of Gibraltar, Verdis is the size of the Vatican, maybe slightly larger, which we recognise will never always be entirely self-sufficient, but I can go into that later. But yeah, when it came to other regions, I mean, say for example the piece of land between Egypt and Sudan, Bir Tawil, I wouldn't say it's necessarily as terra nullius as people claim it to be, because there are nomadic tribes that are in control of that area. So I would say Verdis and these pockets that are between Croatia and Serbia were the truly last pieces of unclaimed land. They had no residents, nothing like that. Whereas other areas, even Antarctica for example, there's an Antarctic Treaty System, but there, of course, there's still people living there, there's still countries that lay claim to it, whether it's recognised or not. So there's not really many pockets around nowadays.

Timothy Allen: You're right about the, what's it called, yeah. Well, I interviewed someone recently, last year, who was kidnapped there actually. He went out there, he's in the kind of movement, but no, he wasn't planning on establishing a new territory, he just went there to see it, I think, because he wants to travel to every country in the world, which he's done now I think, apart from a few, I think four special jurisdictions that are off limits to foreigners. And they were abducted and held for a couple of days by the local Bedouin with Kalashnikovs. Nothing bad happened, he said it quite jovially, what went on. But you're right, the difference here is, apart from loggers maybe, because I know that whenever I've been in and out of Liberland here, there are people working around that area logging. What's the situation in Verdis? In fact, why don't you give us a lowdown of the situation in Verdis? What is Verdis, where is it and how do you know it's Verdis?

Daniel Jackson: Of course, yeah. So Verdis is located about 10 kilometres north of Aljmaš, 10 kilometres south of Apatin, about 20 kilometres south of Liberland. And of course it's in the same situation as Liberland, proclaimed on one of the last pieces of unclaimed land in the world. We're not on Croatian or Serbian cadastral mapping and we've basically been a reality since 2023, although we are now operating in exile as a result of actions by Croatia's authorities. Today's situation, we are still under a blockade. We have offices in the UK, we have offices in Serbia where we run our government in exile. I believe you know this, I was just at Verdis's office in Novi Sad yesterday, which is sort of where I mainly am now. I used to be more based in the UK one, but I get more done by being in Novi Sad. But yeah, with the blockade, the Croatian authorities, there's always a police boat stationed there, sometimes even two. There's no loggers there because Verdis can only really be accessed by boat, unlike Liberland where you guys have access through a road. With Verdis, you cannot access Verdis by road at all. You can only go via boat, even if you're coming from Croatia. But yeah, today, Croatia still constantly keeps us off the land. Each while, even in statements, they release very contradictory quotes. For example, I think recently on CNN with Verdis, they said, oh, we don't consider Verdis as part of our territory, but we're protecting the Schengen area's external border, which doesn't make sense because, of course, the Schengen external border would be the Croatian one. So they make very unusual statements. And today we're effectively in almost the same situation as Liberland, except it's even more difficult for us to put people there. They're a lot more tougher on us. And even if they are coming from Croatia, say, for example, Aljmaš, Croatian police have been known to try and ram people's boats, even with a group of journalists a while ago from Radar magazine in Serbia. It was only that they managed to cross from the Verdisian side to the Serbian side within a metre of the police boat that they weren't run over.

Timothy Allen: So how often can police boats patrol that area though? I mean, we're in a large river here, and I've always thought that they probably don't care that much about Liberland and say Verdis. It's not high on their list of priorities, it's a bit of an annoyance I would have thought. So how come you can't just sneak in there on a boat? Would they really spot you?

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, well that's the thing. It's even been said in recent statements on the media that they have actually upped surveillance in these areas and they particularly almost always now quote both Liberland and Verdis together. And I think with Verdis it is conveniently located in a place where they like to do a lot of surveillance as well anyway, because again, we're only 10 kilometres from Aljmaš, 10 kilometres from Apatin, which is quite close to neighbouring towns. So they are definitely dedicated to being there. They weren't stationed there at all before they had started this blockade, before they arrested all of us. But I would say sometimes there aren't any police boats there, although again, they have claims that they now have surveillance there. And we have tried it at times. Sometimes we'll hang around there for about 10, 15 minutes, and then suddenly we see a boat on the horizon. But they're quite adamant on it. And I find it surprising because of how much money that they are spending each year, or even each week or month alone, on keeping people off these pieces of land that they very much formally don't consider part of their territory on any of their official maps.

Timothy Allen: So that's what I was thinking. If you were on there, they're not going to take you off, are they? Because that would be them admitting that's their land.

Daniel Jackson: Well, they've already done it. They forced us off numerous times and that happened as well.

Timothy Allen: How does that happen then?

Daniel Jackson: So when it happened in October 2023, they came up onto Verdis's beach, one of the officers, he actually rubbed his hands in the sand and then onto the Verdisian flag, a bit of an aggressive move. And they forced us all into Croatia, then giving us bans from Croatia, deporting us, everything like that.

Timothy Allen: So what do you mean, forced you?

Daniel Jackson: They made us go on the boats. One of them even constantly had his hand on his hip, where his gun was, everything like that. It was a bit brutal. And I think Liberland experienced this as well for a long time. Again, it was only in 2023 when they were able to get back on the land. Beforehand, they were constantly being arrested, beaten, all sorts of old footage all the way from 2015 onwards. And so we're almost effectively in that situation as well. I'm sure if we can get past the police boats, I'm not sure if they will try to arrest us again. I think we want to solve things diplomatically. But it is still a continuous problem.

Timothy Allen: Yeah, like I said earlier, I'm one of the spoils of war in Liberland. I was arrested, taken to the police station. They got me on a technicality though, it wasn't really an arrest, it was more like my Airbnb hadn't declared me to the police. But it serves a purpose and the purpose is annoyance. Don't come back. Which I am back, I have come back.

Daniel Jackson: But yeah, exactly. But I don't think them controlling the jurisdiction is them necessarily admitting that that's their territory, because they continuously contradict themselves after each statement, then suddenly saying it's not and that they're, in a way I guess, protecting, they're claiming they're protecting the Schengen border. So I think it's very messy, this situation. It's really hard to really interpret anything that Croatia puts out because it's always very contradictory. And they know what they're doing is illegal, but there's bigger issues in the world I think for people to focus on.

Timothy Allen: Do you know why, and tell me first of all whether this is true, and if so do you know why, you got a big bump in visibility recently? Like I say, I've been monitoring this stuff for quite a long time and in the last year suddenly hundreds of thousands of views on TikToks, some of them millions maybe, is that right?

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, I think when we put it together, even outside of my account on TikTok, we've had over 200 million views with other accounts.

Timothy Allen: And is that this year?

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, within the past year.

Timothy Allen: So what's that all about?

Daniel Jackson: Well I think we're quite good at media I will admit, I don't want to toot my own horn too much when it comes to that, but it all originally started with a video of me getting chased by Croatian police boats this time last year, and I sent that to a local outlet in Serbia, British outlets picked up on it, American outlets, and it just went whoosh. And we managed to keep it going because we've kept moving. We've done exactly what we had said we would do. We opened offices in the UK, we opened an office in Serbia, we've restarted our humanitarian aid programmes, we're doing everything that we can even while operating in exile. And I think people are quite inspired by it, so it just keeps picking up, which we're really grateful for, because with how expensive everything is to run, we do need the publicity and we need the support. And the social media community and the whole internet community, even a lot in person, they haven't let us down. It's been surreal. Even last week I held a meetup in Tbilisi, Georgia, and we have not really been on much Georgian media. We've been on quite a bit of their social media and also a lot of Russian-language media, there's a lot of Russians in Tbilisi since the war. And we were expecting maybe like 10 people, we announced it like two days in advance, and I think we ended up getting about 42. And there's a lot of photos on my social medias of it, it was a surreal experience. There was even a couple that got me a postcard, handwritten on the back, everything like that. It was probably one of the sweetest things I've ever received during a meetup and it was amazing. So we have so much support and it just keeps going. It hasn't died, which has been excellent. We've always made sure to keep to our word and I think that's what people have appreciated.

Timothy Allen: And I'm wondering, firstly, it sounds like you might be stealing a bit of limelight from Liberland, because they'd like 200 million views on social media. I don't know what their social media is like. I don't massively follow it, but certainly I've never seen a social media post about Liberland, but there was one two-week period when all of a sudden Verdis was, we started a country and blah, blah, blah. And the algo liked what you were doing. I'm more interested to wonder whether it's something to do with people actually genuinely, like a new wave of people being interested in the idea of this.

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, it could be, I think, as well. I think Liberland does benefit a bit from it because we do mention Liberland quite a lot in a lot of interviews, because I was inspired quite a bit by Liberland originally. So I think they benefit a bit, but I'm not sure, to be honest. I think Liberland, they do post their videos. I'm not sure if they do it maybe as the same method as us, but I think they could do quite well with some social media engagement. It just depends how they approach it. And I think they've done quite well as well recently. I know that they were on BBC recently, even as we're doing this podcast. There's Al Jazeera a few doors down, which is great. So I think that they're doing well, but I think they're making a different approach to things.

Timothy Allen: Unfortunately, though, the BBC's headline was tech billionaires wanting to make their own country. It is a bit tired, that one. I'm even talking about that on Saturday at my talk here because it's one of the memes that is rife in this movement as a whole. It's all tech billionaires. People say the word billionaire so flippantly, as if billionaires are, number one, there's lots of them, and number two, they even care about things like this, because in my experience, they don't. And I won't go into that now, but I've interviewed various people, from people that work on projects right up to almost billionaires, but people who fund them. And the conspiracy is not to be found at any point. I don't know how that relates to what you're doing.

Daniel Jackson: Of course, I think with us, we're not as focused on, of course, we need finances to run Verdis, everything like that. We've got people to pay, offices to run, humanitarian aid to provide, all of that. But we're not as orientated towards things like blockchain in Verdis. We're more focused on being a country that has fiat currency. So we aim to actually use the euro. Maybe we can be more friendly to crypto in the future, but we just don't think that we're ready for that sort of adaption yet. Verdis is more focused on being a neutral country, one that can serve as a potential mediator with other countries in the future. We can be a hub for humanitarian NGOs. We have very, very different values, even to Liberland. But we still have a lot of similar ethics. And we do get along.

Timothy Allen: I've never thought of Liberland as being necessarily a blockchain place. It's part of it. I think of it as a libertarian enclave. Ideologically, are you aligned in those kinds of principles?

Daniel Jackson: Ideologically, I'm quite centrist, so I'm a little bit different. But I do find some libertarian values interesting when I do look into it a bit. But I wouldn't say most of Verdis's population is necessarily libertarian. We don't even have, how do I put it, when it comes to finances, we're still even on edge in regards to being a tax-free state. The reason being is because we're concerned, we don't want, say for example, Croatia and Serbia to see that as a reason for them to blockade us further. We want to make sure our neighbours feel comfortable with us and we don't want them to feel like that we might be nicking some investment from them.

Timothy Allen: Can I ask you about something that just occurred to me, imposter syndrome. You must have an extreme version of imposter syndrome. It's not like when people get a job and say you're a photographer now and you have to blag it for the first few years because you just decided. Creating a country must give you massive imposter syndrome to start with, especially if, I take it no one's officially recognised Verdis as a country, like another state.

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, well, when it comes to state recognition, we're working hard towards it, of course. That's why these offices and so on exist. And we do have a level of communication with a number of countries. But I think, again, the issue is with Croatia. I don't think these countries will consider recognising Verdis until the issues with Croatia are resolved, because what's the benefit to them, really? If we look at it realistically, they could have issues with Croatia, some sort of even maybe sanctions if they recognise Verdis or Liberland. So I think that they try and hold off until these issues are resolved. But we are engaging. Even next month I'm going down to Côte d'Ivoire to sign a memorandum of understanding with some of their government departments, which we're very much looking forward to. We have quite a lot of progress there. We've been building some things such as toilets for some schools, some water wells and so on. And that's a good way of us trying to build relations with other countries.

Timothy Allen: That's interesting. Côte d'Ivoire. Why Côte d'Ivoire? They're prepared to listen.

Daniel Jackson: Well, we had some good connections with people in their government already. And that was as a result of us already engaging with a lot of NGOs that are there. We recently visited the United Nations headquarters in New York in May, thanks to some invites from foreign officials and NGOs. And we were able to build up a little bit more dialogue there as well. So Côte d'Ivoire was a good place for us to start, and restarting our humanitarian aid and building relations that way as well.

Timothy Allen: Going back to what you just said before the Côte d'Ivoire thing, because this is the most interesting part of this whole saga for me, Liberland and yourselves, is how does it resolve? And when I think about it there's three parties. There's yourselves or Liberland, then there's Croatia and then there's Serbia. And without resolving those three parts, nothing can move forward beyond a certain amount. That's my interpretation. The problem is when you look at it, you need Serbia and Croatia to work it out. Because by default then, all three of you can work it out. You're ready to go. Liberland are ready to go. But the problem I see is the incentive for either one of them to work it out doesn't exist. So how does this thing ever get resolved?

Daniel Jackson: Well I think it really depends. I think with the current governments in Croatia and Serbia, I don't think they necessarily have an interest in resolving these sort of issues. And we would expect as well, under international law, as the oldest active claimants, that we are invited to the table. Because again, we want our neighbours to work with us. We're ready to sit down at a negotiating table. We're ready to communicate. But I think with the issues with Croatia and Serbia, there's bigger issues going on in the countries than talking and sitting down with all these parties about this border dispute. I know that Croatia has suggested that Serbia may never be able to join the European Union until they actually give up the pockets on the Serbian side of the Danube. But I don't think Serbia will ever budge on that. And I think Serbia, unfortunately, is still quite far away from joining the European Union anytime soon either.

Timothy Allen: That's interesting. Where have you heard that?

Daniel Jackson: It's quite publicly known. I think it's been mentioned quite a few times on the foreign ministry website for Croatia. Quite a few of their spokespersons have mentioned it at times. And it's been brought up again recently with the recent news of Croatia making some terms with Montenegro in order for them to unanimously allow Montenegro to join the European Union next year.

Timothy Allen: That's interesting, though. But what business is it of Croatia if a country can join the EU? I thought the EU was a conglomeration of countries. I would have thought they would all agree, yeah, it's fair. So what's that all about?

Daniel Jackson: I think it's always been the same with many countries. When Croatia tried to join the EU, of course, Slovenia had some terms. When Montenegro is now trying to join the EU, Croatia has some terms. I don't think it can necessarily be, well, it needs to effectively be unanimous in practice. And a lot of these countries, when they're joining the European Union, their neighbours who may have some unresolved issues might want to put these issues forwards because they know what their goal is. It's been the same, I'd say, in many countries. It's also, I think, been quite the same as well for organisations like NATO, when Hungary was for a while blocking, I believe, Sweden from joining NATO. It's similar with the European Union as well. They have their terms in order for them to also put their hand up and say yes, I will allow you to join as well.

Timothy Allen: That seems quite an important point then, because that is actually a way out of their disagreements. I wouldn't say it's necessarily good for you or Liberland, but whenever I've observed these projects I've always thought to myself there's no incentive for either Croatia or Serbia to solve the problem, because whatever they do, either one of them loses out, if they relinquish the land or if they give the land. So why would they bother? But that could be a forcing function on it, which would probably mean that Serbia would give up the right to those lands, right, wouldn't they?

Daniel Jackson: Well, I'm not too sure about that, because at the end of the day, even when it comes to joining the European Union, I think realistically it's quite far for Serbia to join. I think there's also a massive amount of people here who are quite against joining the European Union. And Serbia controls every piece of land that they claim on this dispute, excluding the other disputes, say, for example, the issues with Kosovo and so on. When it comes to the Danube, Serbia already controls everything that they claim. They're probably not interested in giving up these pieces of land because they have no interest in the other pieces of land on the other side of the Danube, which is Verdis and Liberland. Both of them want these larger pieces of land, leaving these smaller pieces unclaimed, which effectively should really, I mean, Croatia insists that they're Serbian. Serbia says, no, our border's the centre line of the Danube. At the end of the day, if you look at it, Serbia will never want to give up these pieces of land. It's on their side of the Danube. They're happy with it. They've got people living there, everything like that. They've integrated. When it comes to the pockets on the other side of the Danube, I think in a way Croatia would really be the only ones to lose out on these sort of disputes. I don't think that even during negotiations that Serbia would give up these pieces of land because they have their citizens living there.

Timothy Allen: Presumably, though, in the same sense, Croatia wouldn't give up their side, which is unfortunately you and Liberland.

Daniel Jackson: Well, this is the thing. I think it's hard to say, really, because at the end of the day, Croatia still, they will publicly, it's not necessarily their side in the way that they still publicly reiterate that they don't consider it part of their territory. The pieces of land here in Serbia are also claimed by Croatia. Croatia wants control of those and they've relinquished the claims to these lands. So I think it will be interesting to see how it plays out. This is such a unique situation and it's very hard to interpret how things can go in the next 10 years, 15 years, five years, who knows. But I think that when it comes to Verdis and Liberland, regardless of what happens with the border dispute, even if, say, for example, Croatia decides to try and claim these pockets, we will, of course, condemn it. We would consider it a violation of international law because we are the oldest active claimants to the land. They had previously relinquished it. And I think that we would have to change a lot of our roadmap in terms of fighting this.

Timothy Allen: Is that how the law works then? I've never heard that term before, oldest active claimants.

Daniel Jackson: It goes with terra nullius. We're still even the only active claimants, both Verdis and Liberland. And it's commonly associated with terra nullius that if you are the oldest active claimant to the territory continuously, then you are rightful to it under international law. Of course, it is often ignored a lot, but if you read a lot of academic articles about Verdis or Liberland, maybe journals of international law and so on, terra nullius is the oft-stated term in international law that gives Verdis and Liberland the rights to these territories.

Timothy Allen: Are there any cases of this in the past that you can draw upon?

Daniel Jackson: I think there have, in a way, been some in the past, but I think it's also been a term to abuse. It's also been an abused term. Like, for example, Australia was initially known as terra nullius, which was quite an unusual thing. Because of course, there were people living there, but the British did not consider them civilised enough. And that's what they thought was grounds to claim the territory under terra nullius. A lot of countries and colonies and so on have been claimed under terra nullius in the past, but it's not something that you have really seen in the 21st century, let alone the 20th century. So it's something that's sort of been dug back up. But again, we haven't got any native people living here. There's no one that was living there before Verdis or Liberland claimed these territories, at least in a very long time.

Timothy Allen: Do you happen to know if there are any other pockets of land in the same situation currently with just nobody claiming?

Daniel Jackson: Yes, I believe there's one actually directly opposite Apatin. Very small. I think it's only about 50,000 metres squared. So it's small, but from what I understand, it's very prone to flooding. It has no elevation at all. Verdis is somewhat prone to flooding on the southern side, of course, when the Danube rises, but the northern side is elevated perfectly fine. But I don't think anyone's expressed any interest in the pocket on the side opposite Apatin, because at the end of the day, it's very uninhabitable.

Timothy Allen: Tell me about your nation then. How many people do you have, and how do you even gauge that?

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, so with all the publicity, everything like that, we've only really accepted about 400 citizens. We have a very small territory, so we have to be very tight in regards to accepting new people, letting them naturalise and so on. We also need space to expand in the future. We have about 5,000 e-residents, and basically for us e-residency, it's a way for people to get involved if they can't physically get involved, say for example volunteering at our offices, helping us with humanitarian aid, settling on the land. E-residency is like our digital platform to get involved in the community and potentially sometimes even work your way towards Verdisian citizenship. So there's a lot of people that are interested in citizenship. There's a lot of people that work towards it. And we have so many amazing community contributions. We recently even held a Build Verdis competition, what Verdis could look like, say, for example, if the blockade was lifted tomorrow and what Verdis may look like in 10, 15 years. And we had, I believe, an architecture firm, Tholos Architects, which have an office in London and Vienna. They won. They did an amazing masterplan. I think it was about a 58 page masterplan, going all the way into purchasing materials in Vojvodina, contributing to the local regions. And also, I believe they managed to fit around 5,000 people in Verdis while keeping 60 per cent of it as a nature reserve, which is quite well done. Of course, we don't want it to look like something like Kowloon Walled City. We want it to be a country where people can live comfortably. And with that population as well, there's enough opportunity for work and so on. And we have to accommodate that as a small country. But we get so many amazing proposals by the community around the world, also among our citizens, our e-residents. The support has been astronomical.

Timothy Allen: Tell me about those 400 people. So e-residency 5,000, citizenship 400. So tell me the difference first, and then tell me, how do those 400 become citizens?

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, of course. So e-residency, I'll start with that. Basically, with e-residency, it is more based on, how do I put it? Well, it's in a way like digital e-residency. We've taken inspiration from Estonia, for example, or Palau, but we've taken a little bit more of our own approach. I think we have like two plans. Basic is basically just supporting Verdis, getting involved. You also get a lot of discounts with partners. It's a service, basically. And Plus is basically a little bit more complex than that. Of course, with both plans you get a bit of an ID card. I think with the higher plan as well you can also get an ID card in booklet form, and you also get a pathway towards citizenship. Now we make it very clear that people who are becoming e-residents, especially if they're interested in becoming a citizen, and this also goes for investors as well, that it is a risk investment. Verdis is still working towards international recognition. We're still trying to make our passport more useful. We're very, very open about that, even on the front page of our government website. We do not want to mislead people in any way whatsoever, but we get a lot of involvement regardless, and we get a lot of people who are aware of this and they still apply for e-residency. They work through it. It's only been 12 months since we've kicked off in the media, so we've only just had our first e-residents become citizens. Most of our citizens are through our other programmes, such as volunteering, or we also have a fast-track process for people located in Vojvodina, where we are now in Serbia, or in Slavonia, Croatia. So most of our citizens are ethnic Serbs and Croats, and I would say as well that that demographic could change quite a bit and have a lot more different people as Verdis's e-residency programme grows. But when it comes to citizenship, we are very strict on it. We require everything that a normal state does when you naturalise or apply for a visa. We require background checks, such as if you're in the UK, a DBS check. We require two forms of identification, people to vouch for you as a person of good character, birth certificates, everything. We even at times do sometimes require biometrics taken at the office at some point. So we're quite strict on everything. We want to make sure everything's carried out the way most states do it.

Timothy Allen: But that's interesting, but no ideological bent. So you're not a group of people looking for freedom. You sound like you want to establish a pretty normal state.

Daniel Jackson: Well, I think when it comes to Verdis, of course we do have our values mentioned, but Verdis is, again, it's less about libertarianism, it's more about being a neutral state. A lot of people that get involved in Verdis, they get involved for many different reasons. We don't really have one specific ideological point that stands out. As a small country, we have people that get involved for many reasons. Maybe they do agree with a lot of Verdis's values, especially around neutrality, being a hub for humanitarian NGOs, sort of being a neutral state in the Balkans and potential mediator. And there's also people that get involved because they want to be involved in a bit of history. They enjoy the community that is surrounded by Verdis. There's many different reasons. We're not subject to specifically one reason. I don't think many countries necessarily entirely are, of course, aside from them pointing out democracy and so on, which we aim to be as well. But Verdis is a very vast range of values and ideas, and I think that's what creates us.

Timothy Allen: So the other thing I was going to say then was, what's the plan here? Having observed a lot of things like this over the years, the stage you're at now is the fun and interesting and exciting stage, which is, well...

Daniel Jackson: Well, I would say, I think the biggest thing to us, the biggest difference that's going to impact the most, is once that blockade's lifted. We're suddenly going to have a massive responsibility to make sure that we have full control of the jurisdiction, that we are responsible for the safety of people and also for border control, everything like that. That is probably going to be the most exciting but also nerve-wracking thing for us. Rebuilding the settlement and making sure that everything that we do is in function, it's properly aligned with other countries, we make sure our neighbours feel comfortable. What we're doing now is just trying to build relations, everything like that. I think that when the blockade's lifted, that's when it's going to be the most nerve-wracking.

Timothy Allen: What are you planning on doing at your border then?

Daniel Jackson: Well, we're not Schengen and we're not part of Serbia, so we do have to have a border control. We're very acknowledging on that. And we're hoping that our neighbours will at least work with us on that, but we will just have a normal functioning border control just like most other countries. Of course, it will likely maybe operate with a ferry maybe operating from Aljmaš or Apatin, because of course we would need to build a bit of a road with Croatia. But we hope that our neighbours will work with us on this, because we want to cooperate. We want to make sure that they feel comfortable with people that are entering and leaving Verdis into their countries as well. We want to make sure that there is as much cooperation as possible and as much of a partnership.

Timothy Allen: You mentioned a passport earlier. Have you got a passport?

Daniel Jackson: I do actually, it's in my pocket. I've got two, I've got my one, which is a bit rugged, and this is a specimen one that can be shown on camera.

Timothy Allen: Where do you get a passport made? That sounds dodgy, do you know what I mean?

Daniel Jackson: Of course, yeah.

Timothy Allen: You can see it's very like a normal passport. It's got all the funny lines and squiggly things on it. So is there a place you go to get passports made? And I don't mean that in a dodgy way.

Daniel Jackson: No, of course. Well, we do have a manufacturer, a security manufacturer, one that's certified, everything like that, that we do work with in regards to making the booklet and putting the UV features on the document. We don't publicly disclose it for security reasons, but we have a manufacturer for that. And of course, as well, all the other little bits, say, for example, the holograms that you can see on the data page, that's done with another manufacturer. And when it comes to the data pages, we actually do that in our own offices. So we have a UV printer.

Timothy Allen: Yeah, it's rather nice. Have you ever got a reaction at a border? Have you ever shown it anywhere?

Daniel Jackson: Well, we don't entirely encourage our citizens to use it in countries that don't necessarily recognise our documents yet. But there is a guy, actually, that constantly crosses from Greece on his Greek passport into Macedonia on his Verdisian one. He does it about once every two to three weeks. No problem whatsoever. He's got stamps in it, everything.

Timothy Allen: Is that right?

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, and it doesn't go with the same border point either. He tries it out in different little locations. He's never really had a problem. I don't think you would really get into the European Union with it. But we are working really hard to get these documents recognised, even prior to the countries recognising us themselves. Sort of like, I guess, documents from Taiwan. A lot of countries de facto accept their documents, even though they don't hold diplomatic relations with the Republic of China, instead choosing the People's Republic of China.

Timothy Allen: Do Liberland have a passport?

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, they do. There's a few that I've seen around today, actually. So you have to check them out. They're quite nice.

Timothy Allen: And you do have good relations with Liberland, because I spoke to Thomas Walls. I was chatting to him just now as you walked past. And he said, oh, yeah, yeah, we like them. We like what they're doing. I think it's a mutually beneficial thing, which is nice to know.

Daniel Jackson: I mean, we love working with them.

Timothy Allen: But it is, you are standing at the bottom of a very large mountain, I would say. Does that ever feel like that for you?

Daniel Jackson: It definitely feels like an uphill battle all the time. But I think anything's possible. And with the way that we've gone so far, I mean, we did the first settlement entirely on our own funds. With the way that we've gone today, just by hitting a few news articles and then it just going whoosh, anything's possible. And with the amount of international support we're receiving, the opening of dialogue with other countries, NGOs, things like that, I think that there is a good chance we could be back on the land soon. I don't know whether that's in a year's time, five years, but this is something that we are committed to, and it is something that we are in for the long run. And I also think that there is quite a bit of support within Croatia itself, particularly among young people, especially in Slavonia, one of the regions that both Verdis and Liberland border. Unfortunately, they're one of the poorest regions in Croatia. They have a massively decreasing population. But when I speak to young people there, even Verdis's Internal Affairs Minister, he's from Osijek, just across the border in Croatia. Most young people there are open to the idea of Verdis and Liberland. And whether they're sceptical or not, they still see it as a way of Slavonia now having more of an opportunity for a boost in tourism, opportunities, demand. And I think that the more that young people get involved in politics in Croatia, the more lenient that they will be to the opening or to the building of relations between Verdis and Liberland and Croatia. I think that hopefully it doesn't have to come to that. We want to open relations now. But we're happy to do this diplomatically and we're in it for the long run.

Timothy Allen: You said "back on Verdis". What have you ever done on Verdis? So it was five years old, this project, right, did you say?

Daniel Jackson: Well, it was an idea in 2019. It didn't become a reality until 2023 when we actually put together a government and started being on the land. So I'd say it's only in the past three years that we've really moved things, and it's only in the past year that things have really picked up. When we did the settlement, that was entirely on our own funds, we didn't have any offices, anything like that.

Timothy Allen: So describe what the original settlement involved.

Daniel Jackson: It wasn't much. We had a few boats, even a houseboat and so on on the side. We had some prefabricated materials being prepared to be brought over from Serbia. And unfortunately, it was only short-lived, a few days. We still call it a settlement because at the end of the day, there's no one in the international community that really says how long a settlement is permanent. And I believe we spent quite a lot of time in Verdis before us publicly announcing that as well. We did loads of cadastral work, surveying, we did the whole shebang basically. And it was only, I think it was October the 12th 2023, when Croatia actually decided to put a stop to us. Beforehand, when we were doing surveying work, even when we had already informally started the settlement, Croatian police would go by and they would wave at us and everything like that. But the moment that it was formally announced that we were already there and everything, they panicked. Even though they had already seen us on the land, they panicked and they arrested all of us. They took us into Croatia. Some people were given a three-month ban, some people given a permanent ban. I can't go to Croatia at all, I'm effectively permanently banned. I mean, the documents that they give me are very weird, but I've basically been told that I'm considered a threat to homeland security and that I should not even try to enter the country even after my ban expires. And I believe that, because even recently, my colleague who you met earlier, Dušan Đurđević, one of Verdis's representatives to Serbia, he's actually Verdis's youngest official. He was seen in a British newspaper called The Sun. And he tried to cross the border because he's part Croatian. He wanted to collect his great-grandfather's birth certificate. And he crossed the border. They saw his passport flagged red. They pulled him aside and they said they had seen him in a British newspaper and that he was a Verdis official. And they interrogated him for two hours straight before sending him back into Serbia. So they're very tough on us at the moment. And it's unfortunate because we're very open to coming to Zagreb, sitting down. We would like to come to the table. We want to make sure they're comfortable with us.

Timothy Allen: So your first settlement attempt, do you think when the police were being nice to you, as in they were driving past on their boats and waving, do you think they thought you were just in Croatia?

Daniel Jackson: Definitely not. We had a massive flag at the front. We weren't trying to be discreet about it at all. And that was for good reason. And we had a lot of support as well, even in Aljmaš. A lot of the fishermen there had been very helpful with taking us to and from Verdis, including a veteran, actually, that fought during the Croatian War of Independence, specifically in those sort of regions in Kopački Rit and Aljmaš, in the area that was considered the breakaway Republic of Serbian Krajina. So we had quite a good amount of support, to be honest. And I think people were quite open to the idea of Verdis. Maybe it's hard to say really, but they were quite open, they were very reasonable with us. A lot of times we even were given free places to stay by locals. Of course we paid afterwards, we insisted. But the support was really good. And it's a shame that we can't be there to visit those people again and so on at the moment, until the issues with Croatia resolve.

Timothy Allen: So yeah, it's a tough one, really, isn't it? I can look at it from both sides and I think you can say, wow, great, unclaimed land, let's do it. But you can also think, hold on a minute, if you lived in Croatia, I think they probably look at it like this, that they probably think, what do we get out of that? And the answer is certainly in the short term, at least, not a lot. All we get is some unknown thing happening over there that we don't have control over, right on our border. So we don't like that. I think that the best argument for Liberland and Verdis and things like that is a long-term argument. We will provide this, we'll be a good neighbour, we'll be all these kinds of things, but that's a hard sell in a political sphere, I think.

Daniel Jackson: Of course, yeah. But even, if you read, I know I've mentioned it quite a number of times in this podcast, but if you read any of the news interviews I do, I always make it very clear that we're ready to sit down. We don't necessarily plan on having many laws different to our neighbours, anything that's considered radical to them or anything that's concerning to them. We want to make sure that they feel comfortable with us. We want to make sure that there's cooperation, that there's a partnership. We're ready to sit down and hear what their concerns are. We want to do that. They will only speak to us through the media at the moment, which is really frustrating. And I think as well, though, there is quite a bit of benefit to them, at least in the sphere of the neighbouring regions. Of course, I think any other country, if a new country popped up on your border, you would just be like, oh, hello, that's a bit unusual. But again, we want to make sure they feel comfortable with us. And yeah, I think we would already benefit them even if the blockade was lifted tomorrow, because maybe it would take a year or so to make sure that these countries are stable and that they are safe. Of course, Verdis and Liberland have a lot of work to do in making sure that these jurisdictions and so on are patrolled and administered properly. There's a full justice ministry, everything like that in place. But I think that Slavonia and Vojvodina, the neighbouring regions between Croatia and Serbia, would benefit quite a lot with things like tourism. Newest countries in Europe, some very small microstates. There's a lot of travellers that would be very interested in seeing these new countries and seeing what they could become long time in the future as they continue to develop.

Timothy Allen: One of the best outcomes that I see for you and Liberland would be a generational shift in ideas, as in younger people coming through and thinking this is a good idea. Because I think probably people who've been in politics for a long time now, it's just a load of hassle for them. At the moment, it's simple. Stop people getting in there. But when it becomes a place, suddenly they've got two new neighbours which have country status, which is a big deal. I mean, you can make a law that says, you know, whatever's legal. I know you say you're not going to, but they won't care about that once a country's a country. You have no control over what the future looks like.

Daniel Jackson: Of course, of course. But we would be happy to sign something with them, anything that we can do to make them feel comfortable with us. And I'm sure that they can also have a bit of influence on us, in the way that if we do do something that they don't like, as a small country, both Verdis and Liberland are small countries, we won't always have a large element of self-sufficiency, especially Verdis. Liberland is much larger. With Verdis, we're very small, we're between the size of the Vatican and Monaco. Monaco, for example, has to rely on France for a lot of things, so automatically they don't want to damage those relations with France. They don't want to damage their relations with their neighbour in any way whatsoever. And I don't think Verdis would want to do so either. So I think that it's important, so that Croatia would note that we want to make sure that they are comfortable with the fact that anything that we sign, we will stick to our word.

Timothy Allen: Can you describe what it's going to look like, or what you think it's going to look like in the future? Go to the point where you have achieved sovereignty, and what would Verdis look like?

Daniel Jackson: Oh, to what we visualise it as today, it could change a lot in 10 years if we're still not back on the land at that point either. But the designs that we've had have been quite amazing. We've had designs of Verdis where it could look a bit Austro-Hungarian, so similar to the styles around here in Apatin and Osijek and the neighbouring regions. And there's also been a lot of modern designs, environmental designs, and designs where it is heavily taking into account, like mentioned earlier, the resources in neighbouring Slavonia and Vojvodina, which is also very beneficial for our neighbours' economies because we are paying for services, we are paying for resources. I don't think that we'll always be an entirely self-sufficient country. Of course, we will have to pay a lot of our neighbours for a lot of essential resources, maybe even potentially electricity. But again, most small countries have to do that, including Monaco and the Vatican. We're okay with doing these sort of things. And I think that we can be a country that can be quite innovative. We can test new forms of governance again. We can serve as a hub for NGOs. There's a lot of different things that we can try out, even with being such a small territory. So I'd say it's very hard to predict what Verdis could look like 10 years down the line if the blockade was lifted tomorrow, because there's so much work to be done. And even then as well, we need to have our first elections, so we've got a lot to do.

Timothy Allen: That's a good point. What about taxes?

Daniel Jackson: Taxes. We're not necessarily overly interested in Verdis being an entirely tax-free state. I think that maybe we can look at an issue with Monaco where maybe you've been a resident for a certain amount of years and then you can become a tax-free resident. But again, this is something that's still very much under debate within Verdis itself, because we're very careful with where we tread. And I think, as a new country popping up on another country's border and then saying it's a tax haven, you know, you're gambling a bit there. While it is a very interesting idea and it could work, it depends how those neighbours feel, because they may feel like there could be a loss of investment and so on. We're trying to tread very carefully on the issue of tax.

Timothy Allen: However, how are you going to attract people to live there, though? That's the thing. Obviously, incentives. We debate this continuously on this podcast, and there are many examples of very attractive places around the world not getting enough residents. Or places like Dubai, which is basically a desert, and they've managed to attract so many people to live there purely on the grounds that they can go there and they can make money and they can not pay tax. And this is a very, very, very strong incentive. You can't underestimate it. So how do you attract people to come to Verdis?

Daniel Jackson: Well, I don't think that when people are moving, they're always going to have their minds based solely on tax incentive. I think there's many different reasons as to why someone would want to move to a country. That could be just a better life, or it could also be, again, people that are interested in Verdis's values, they're interested to see where the country will go in the future, they may just want to be part of some history. I think as a small country as well, with it being a small population, population is much more influential on the government, because again, we don't plan to have probably even more than 6,000, 8,000 people. So we don't really need to push a massive incentive of people living there, because we can't really fit everyone. I think that the incentives that we have now and the history that Verdis has built is already enough of an incentive so far. I think that we would also, however, like to make Verdis attractive for business. We would like to move more into things like digitisation and so on, which could also be quite helpful for Verdis's economy, even abroad. If we can push more in our e-residency system, once we have control back of the territory, we can maybe start the allowance of things like digital businesses, see what we can do to make it attractive for digital nomads. I know that tax incentive is a very important factor of that, but again, that's why it's still very much up for debate, because we're trying to do this while also trying to keep our neighbours happy.

Timothy Allen: Which you keep saying. I hear you, I know you're very much establishing that. Tell me about Verdis's values. That's another thing you've said a number of times. What are Verdis's values?

Daniel Jackson: Well, Verdis's values is that we want to be a free country. We want to be a country where people are respected regardless of their backgrounds, their religious views and so on. We want to be a country where everyone can feel welcome. As well as that, we're also a country that prides itself on neutrality. Of course, there are people who always have their own views on things, like normal. I have my own views on a lot of issues, but when it comes to carrying out Verdis's foreign policy, we make sure that the country is strictly neutral so we can potentially serve as a mediator in the future. So there's a lot of different values that Verdis has. I think as well, is a massive part of it, surprisingly, even though I'm not Croatian or Serbian myself, most of Verdis's citizens are actual ethnic Serbs and Croats. A lot of them are interested in getting involved in Verdis because they want to get along with the other side again, and this is mainly among young people. Most of Verdis's citizens are between the ages of, I'd say, 20 to 35. They're tired of the nationalism, the extreme conflicts or the dubious statements made between governments. They just want to get along. And I think that that's a good reason as to why a lot of people get involved in Verdis. Of course, they're tired of the history. Of course, you can never forget history. It's an important way to learn from horrible things that happen or important things that happen. But a lot of them just want to get along with the other side again.

Timothy Allen: Are there any real life examples of similar places around the world? You've mentioned Monaco, Vatican, whatever. Are there some models around the world that you like the look of yourselves?

Daniel Jackson: I would say what we're doing is quite unique. Of course, not many people create a new country in the 21st century. But we have looked at a few models, especially when it comes to the country's values or what it wants to be on the international stage. And I think an example of that, believe it or not, is the Vatican. Even though the Vatican is religious, they have often served as a mediator. With many, many countries, they've been open to it many times. Of course, Turkey has also been a mediator, but the Vatican has done it on a decent scale while being a very tiny country. We take inspiration from many different states for many different reasons. I wouldn't say that we particularly lean towards the inspiration of a specific one. We're our own thing.

Timothy Allen: The two examples that I can think of, which you've also mentioned, Vatican and Monaco, are both full of incredibly wealthy people. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, I'm saying it's quite a likely thing, especially in a place that has no indigenous industry. In a sense, you have to generate your income somewhere, don't you? And obviously you're not going to start mining the place. But business is a very important part of it. The Vatican's a very special example, but Monaco especially, obviously Monaco is a tax-free place for long-term residents and that's one of the big draws to go there, if not the biggest draw. It's a nice place, but you could live just down the coast a little bit and get the same views, but people want to be in Monaco. So does stuff like that leave a bad taste in your mouth or not?

Daniel Jackson: Not necessarily. I think that everything's a learning opportunity and it's good for us to dig deeper. And we can change a lot of things over time. We're not necessarily stuck to being maybe like... Maybe we could end up being a tax-free state in the future. Maybe not. It may depend, in the way that we could be a tax-free state, but we want to make sure that we're not taking investment from Croatia, maybe. There can be some sort of regulation around that. We want to be attractive for business. It just matters on how we do it.

Timothy Allen: Talk me through the next stages, the next important stages. Obviously, lifting the blockade is. But how realistic is that? What are you currently working on? And give me some specifics, not just generally doing diplomatic stuff. I'm not trying to be facetious. It's just, I think I often hear that. Vít is always telling me that he's doing diplomatic stuff, and he does. But really, when I look at this situation, there's only one diplomatic stuff that's important, and that's Croatia. And that seems very, very difficult, I think.

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, I'll definitely run into some specifics, but I would say before I go into that, is that we do have a lot that is going on, but not necessarily everything that we can always be public about, because we're worried about a bit of jeopardisation from Croatia on the matter. The few things that we have been public about just to keep the ball rolling publicly, even though there's a lot more going on behind the scenes, is one is Côte d'Ivoire, of course, where I will be going down as well. We'll be doing the opening for the bathrooms of some schools, some water wells, things like that, and signing a memorandum of understanding with a couple of their ministries and also one of their municipalities. That's really excellent for us, because of course that in a way opens some dialogue for us, helps us start that process towards international recognition with them, of diplomatic ties. Of course, even though it's not geographically close to Verdis, it is still a UN member state and it's a country that we see that we can help out as well, and maybe they can be helpful to us by recognising us. So we would love to continue building that dialogue with them. Of course, we don't think that this first trip is going to establish diplomatic ties formally with them in the first place. We're just signing a memorandum with them. But we want to show that we'll remain committed to that, we'll still continue to provide aid, we want to move it on a much larger scale. So that's a move that we're making with a few countries at the moment, and while we're not necessarily entirely public about all of them, Côte d'Ivoire is one that we are public about, just as an example. And so I'll be going down there next month. I've had all my yellow fever shots, everything like that, for it. I'm very much looking forward to it, and we think that it's going to be quite helpful in building that relationship within that region. As well as that, in October, I'm going back to New York to attend a gala, and also some of our staff, some of my team, will be attending some diplomatic training there as well, just basically brushing up, making sure things are good, because we want to make sure everyone's on point. And at this gala, it's basically humanitarian awards at the United Nations Conference Hall in New York. It's going to have a lot of influential figures there, including the former President of Haiti and so on. And that's really amazing for us because it allows us to network. It allows us to build more of a relationship. And we're also keen as well on opening more offices. Of course, we've opened the one in the UK, which is our main one. We've opened one in Serbia, but we've now also got our eyes on potentially opening one in the European Union as well. Now, the previous things I mentioned, they're already happening, like the reconstruction of the toilets. They're effectively almost done now. We're just going to go down there and do their official openings, everything like that, next month. But we're still planning in regards to opening an office in the European Union. We had a bit of interest from some people who have invested in Verdis in Copenhagen. They offered to sort of subsidise it a bit for us. But as well, maybe we would also like to look a bit more at Brussels, where we can network further, we can be a little bit more integrated. Even though it might be a bit more costly for us, we'd probably get a lot more out of it. So those are the sort of approaches that we're making at the moment.

Timothy Allen: And how do you fund all this? How do you pay for it?

Daniel Jackson: So we get a lot of people who do things like citizenship by investment and so on. Of course, again, we always make it clear that we're working towards international recognition, it is a risk investment. We don't want anyone paying for a passport thinking that it's going to get them everywhere. We make it very clear that we're not fully recognised, although we do believe we will become recognised over time. We want to make sure people are aware and that they do their due diligence, they know what they're getting into, everything like that. So we have a lot of citizens by investment through that who are just happy to do it anyway. They're thinking, oh, maybe this passport could become useful in the future, oh, I like these values, I'll invest in it. And we've also had a few large-scale donations through that as well. And we also have Verdis's e-residency programme, which I think from what I understand has generated about 170,000 euros in the past year, which of course is not enough to build an entire country, but it is very helpful for us. So there's a lot of different ways that Verdis is generating funds, also things like processing fees, services, all of that. And that effectively helps us to do everything. It allows us to pay people, it allows us to run our offices, allows us to travel, engage in international relations, it allows us to provide the humanitarian aid. The humanitarian aid that we're providing is not being done through a GoFundMe or anything like that. We want to show that we're using Verdis's government funds appropriately, and providing humanitarian aid directly from Verdis's government also shows to Côte d'Ivoire that we are committed to building a relationship with them. We're not just doing it out of some donations or anything, we're putting a part of our economy in to build a friendship.

Timothy Allen: I never knew this until I spoke to Vít, or maybe it's Thomas Walls, I can't remember, but that seems to be one of the ways you make diplomatic relationships, is you go to a country and you basically offer them something, like we'll build you this, that and the other. Because as far as I remember, I think Liberland went to somewhere like El Salvador, and then a few days later Croatia turned up and offered them something bigger. Is that right? Is that a true story?

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, well, it is. We were speaking about that actually a while ago when I was last here in Liberland. I was speaking with Thomas and so on about that. It is unfortunate, but this is the thing, it's even risky for us to talk publicly about Côte d'Ivoire, because we want to build a relationship with them. We're hoping that Croatia doesn't step in. It's a bit silly of us to be public about it, but again, we do have a lot of other stuff that is running in the background. And we just want to show that we are working hard.

Timothy Allen: But at least they're taking you seriously. I thought that was quite impressive, that a big country like Croatia sent a diplomatic mission over to El Salvador to sort of up the ante on something that Liberland were offering them. It seems a bit petty in many ways, but also it's like, cool, they've taken them seriously.

Daniel Jackson: I think it's also been the subject of many other regions, and for conversation's sake, I'm going to refer to Abkhazia as Abkhazia, if you've heard. Basically, many of the international community continue to consider this region as part of Georgia, whereas I think there's only five UN member states that recognise Abkhazia as an independent state. And there is a lot of interesting background regarding that, where recently Nauru, small country in Oceania, dropped their recognition of Abkhazia, and this only happened last month. And there's a lot of information surrounding documents of financial incentive to recognise, all that and the other. But they've recently dropped it in exchange to recognise Georgia. And I believe one of their ministers said in the past, and of course, this is, I'm saying this out of pure, just trying to make it unbiased, just trying to say it as just something that's interesting in history, not that I have a particular view on any of it personally, but one of their ministers, I believe, said that they couldn't afford what Russia had paid Nauru to recognise Abkhazia, and so that's why Georgia wasn't able to pay those sort of funds, or something along the lines of that. Again, I could get that completely flipped the wrong way, so I shouldn't really be talking about it. But again, this is something that I'm saying without any particular view towards. It's just an interesting bit of history, where it seems that there's countries pushing incentives for them to recognise other countries. It's the same with Taiwan and the People's Republic of China, how these small Caribbean and even oceanic countries will often swap recognition every five years because they get different investments.

Timothy Allen: I don't think anyone would disagree with you. I think we can all imagine that that's the kind of stuff that goes on at the diplomatic level, because it's all incentives. It's all about incentives, isn't it? And if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Works when you're dealing with someone who you think can provide you with something. And obviously that's one of your big uphill battles, is how do you convince? At the moment, of course, you can go to Côte d'Ivoire because I'm sure they're happy to get humanitarian aid. What is it that you can offer to Croatia? Because Croatia is the big boss of all this, I think, always. It's the same with Liberland. The big boss is Croatia.

Daniel Jackson: I think, again, that Croatia won't start to reap the benefits of Verdis being a neighbour until the blockade is lifted. That's the issue. They need to realise that in order for it to be lifted. But I think, again, like I mentioned before, tourism, boosting demand, things like that, it's all absolutely helpful because, again, we do border one of the poorest regions in Croatia. Of course, Croatia is thriving in tourism on the west coast, but no one really goes east. This gives an incentive. People want to check out a new country, people will be travelling through Verdis, using their services. And as we continue to build Verdis, we want to, of course, pay for a lot of resources and services from Croatia as well. We want to contract companies from Croatia and Serbia, so it's beneficial for their economies in that sort of way, in the way that there's a boost in the use of services, boost in demand, tourism, a lot of things that are well and truly needed, particularly in eastern Croatia.

Timothy Allen: Well, I wish you good luck. I will wrap it up now. Actually, it just occurred to me, are you president of Verdis?

Daniel Jackson: Yes, I am.

Timothy Allen: But you've never had an election. Are you a despotic president by any chance?

Daniel Jackson: No. So right now we're functioning under what we call a temporary government. We would have elections, but just like many countries that are operating in exile or under a blockade, or even if they're at war, many of them suspend elections until that's resolved. It's not safe to do so, and there's not the right stability in order for us to have an election. So once Verdis is back on the land, once we've built more international recognition, more infrastructure, more of its economy, we will be putting in a vote for a new constitution, which will determine how Verdis will be governed in the future, replacing our old constitution, which is temporary, we refer to it as basic laws. And after that's done, we will be having elections, and I won't be running in them. I will be stepping down and living as a normal citizen in Verdis.

Timothy Allen: Really? Why is that?

Daniel Jackson: I'm not necessarily interested in power or anything like that. I think when it comes to Verdis, I'm here to get the job done. I want to live in the country that I helped create. I don't necessarily want to continue running it. I wanted to show as well, with me stepping down and with elections taking place, I want to show Verdis's democratic principles take place.

Timothy Allen: It sounds very moralistic and very virtuous. But I would say that there's no one with more reason to make it work than you, unfortunately, currently.

Daniel Jackson: And this is why we would do it, of course, once we're back on the land, once we're developed and everything, then we'll be ready for an election. I don't think that it's worth us doing it beforehand, because we're all here for a common reason at the moment. We're all here to get back on the land, get things sorted, and then worry about elections once we're further developed.

Timothy Allen: And quickly before we go, some advice about social media. How do you get to 200 million?

Daniel Jackson: That's across TikTok, not just my own account. I think my own account, there's like 8 million likes and a good like 30, 40 million views or something from that account alone. But I would say the best way to do it, make it engaging from the start, make it short and to the point, and if you can't make it to the point from the start, move the most engaging bit to the front of the video. That way people will be interested from the start. They already know what they're about to get into. You don't want it to have a build-up of interest, you want things to be interesting, engaging from the start of a video.

Timothy Allen: And final, final, final question. Do you think this is a moment in history where things like this are of more interest than normal? I could hypothesise that we see trends towards authoritarianism amongst states in places that I would consider, even where I am, taxes rising, governments pretty much bankrupt and living on credit and taking more and more from their citizens, blah, blah, blah. Do you think that the sort of notion of new countries that might be starting from scratch is coming of age? Is it having a moment or not?

Daniel Jackson: I'm not sure how much I think I can say on it. But I would say when it comes to the interest of things like Verdis and Liberland, it's more because this sort of thing hasn't been done before, at least in the 21st century. And not to mention as well, I think in an increasingly interconnected world, a much larger population, people are much more curious. And I think that of course there are many people who may want to leave their countries, get involved in Verdis and Liberland. I think there's many different reasons as to why Verdis is seen as interesting and Liberland is seen as interesting, but I would say it's very popular among, for Verdis in particular, very popular among young people at the moment.

Timothy Allen: Good. Well, that gives me hope for the future anyway. Daniel, thanks mate, for sharing all that. Like I say, I'm really glad I bumped into you. I wasn't planning on seeing you, but you popped up on the socials recently and it's like, I really need to speak to that guy. There's a hole in our knowledge stack on this kind of stuff. So thanks for sitting down with us.

Daniel Jackson: Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure to be on. It was a pleasure to meet you.

Timothy Allen: Good luck. Good luck for the future. And yeah, hopefully let's hook up again in a couple of years.

Daniel Jackson: Absolutely.

Timothy Allen: Maybe we'll do it on Verdis.

Daniel Jackson: Yes, that would be cool. Nice to see you.

Timothy Allen: Nice to see you too. Take care.