special report - European Voice

30 May 2013
15
SPECIAL REPORT
Croatia
BUDDY, CAN YOU SPARE A KUNA? Croatia’s economic problems
WHO’S WHO The main players in the Croatian government
BORDER TROUBLE The impact of accession on the western Balkans
REUTERS
The accession
process is over
and Croatia is
ready to join the
European Union,
but the celebrations
will be
low-key, write
Andrew Gardner
and Toby Vogel
Croatia will on 1 July become
the 28th country in the
European Union. There will
be ceremonies in Zagreb, attended
by the leaders of the
EU’s institutions and a scattering
of EU prime ministers.
For the public, there will
be fireworks and concerts.
But, overall, the moment of
accession will be a muted
affair. That is partly because,
for the first time since Greece
joined the EU in 1981, this
wave of enlargement involves
just a single country.
The mood in Zagreb was
in any case set to be downbeat.
Though the ‘Yes’ vote in
Croatia’s January 2012 referendum
on accession was
sizeable (66%), the country’s
prime minister, Zoran Milanović,
acknowledges that a
New kid on the bloc
sense of deflation and fatigue
has sapped Croats’ enthusiasm.
Within the EU itself
these days, few are
pro-enlargement.
But there is another reason
for the unusual sobriety:
there is little sense of apprehension.
Croatia has been
through an accession
process that was unusually
long (it applied for membership
in 2003) and unprecedentedly
rigorous. The result
was a clean bill of health
from a European Commission
painfully conscious of
the maladies that still afflict
the EU’s two most recent
members, Romania and
Bulgaria (see page 17).
But perhaps the noncommital
calm is misplaced.
The EU is taking on board a
small country whose rather
uncompetitive economy is in
crisis – and, since it is
obliged to adopt the euro at
some point, its problems
may soon become the eurozone’s.
The EU knows full
well how small countries can
produce big problems.
There is certainly a case for
concern that Croatia will
join a list headed by Greece,
Cyprus, Ireland, Portugal
and now Slovenia.
On top of that there are
peculiarities specific to Croatia.
While it is small in clout
and population, it has land
borders of 2,372 kilometres
– a larger populationto-border
ratio than even
thinly-populated Finland.
The significant extension of
the EU’s external border will
make it still harder to police,
and its vulnerability will
surely again be an issue as
Croatia moves to join the
Schengen zone of passportfree
travel.
Then there is its recent
history. Only 18 years ago
Croatia was still a war zone,
and, as even government
categorisations suggest, it
may well still be shellshocked:
80,000 Croats
claim invalidity benefits for
post-traumatic stress disorder
caused, they say, by the
war – 80% of the total disability
claims in the country.
Might the EU be importing
a nation with a highly developed
sense of victimhood?
Small and modernising
Such concerns may, though,
be over-simplistic. First, it is
worth restating just how
small Croatia is: its population
of just 4.3 million is the
seventh-smallest in the EU
and 3 million less than
Bulgaria’s. The accession
process was long (see page
17). The government is reforming
the economy (see
page 16). Its domestic politics
features two parties that
have thoroughly modernised
themselves and that fit comfortably
(although Croats
may beg to differ) within the
mainstream of European social
democracy and Christian
democracy (see pages
17-19).
Croatia’s impact on the
EU itself looks likely to be
limited (see page 20), and –
in part because it has been
forced by the EU to address
the legacy of the war – its
impact on its own neighbourhood
could prove positive
(see page 20). Moreover,
it has gone through war, reform
and political reinvention
and its government has
changed colour (albeit only
twice, in 2000 and 2011)
without a hiatus in the reform
dynamic.
4,284,889
Population
(2011 census)
Croatia is also evolving in
ways that show it to be not
untypical of how society is
changing across Europe. It
remains a very conservative
and Catholic country, but
the debate on homosexual
rights shows that the
Catholic Church’s clout
has weakened substantially.
Similarly, while anti-Serb
sentiment remains strong,
particularly in football stadiums,
attitudes to Muslims
may be more liberal than in
many European countries.
Unlike neighbouring Slovenia,
for example, it has had
no disputes over minarets.
Tensions with Muslims
occasionally surface, but
these are with Bosnian Muslims
who moved to Croatia
in the 1970s: these disputes
have little to do with religion
and more to do with the
presence of a non-indigenous
working class.
While they cannot command
enthusiasm on 1 July,
Croatia’s political leaders
will be able to request,
with considerable justice,
credit for the changes they
have achieved in a country
that is the first since 1952 to
join the EU within two
decades of being engulfed in
war.