Croatia turns against EU and Sanader

Date: 09/12/04

ALTHOUGH the European Council is next week expected to note Croatia's progress towards joining the EU, the prospect of Union membership is plummeting in popularity amid Croatian citizens.

Only a year ago, 90% of Croatians were in favour of joining the EU.

But, according to recent opinion polls, more than half are now against the idea.

Many analysts were puzzled by these figures, as Croatia has not yet started accession negotiations.

Swinging between love and hate for EU entry, most Croatians seem to be ruled by emotions rather than reason.

Some months ago, a new political party, Independence and Progress (SIN), led by Nenad Ivankovic, once an associate of former president Franjo Tudjman's son Miroslav, began stoking the fires of Europhobia by various means.

The party covered the country's jumbo-sized advertisement boards with enigmatic messages such as: "EU is not cool. But Sir i vrhnje is. Think about it!"

Sir i vrhnje, simply translated as fresh cottage cheese and sour cream, is a traditional dish bought fresh directly from farmers.

Soon the whole country was talking about home-made food disappearing from the markets, making Sir i vrhnje symbolic of a tradition that, it is feared, will be lost with the EU entry.

Another reason for the current increase in Euroscepticism is the issue of the runaway Croatian army general Ante Gotovina. The European Council is planning to make the opening of negotiations conditional on cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia.

Pressure on Croatia to find and arrest Gotovina provokes hatred towards the Union, as many Croatians perceive him as a hero rather than someone who could be responsible for war crimes.

The Croatian premier Ivo Sanader said recently - and, for some, surprisingly - that he believed "that Gotovina was innocent" but that "he has to prove this in front of The Hague tribunal".

Sanader addressed another sensitive issue during a recent historic visit to Serbia and Montenegro (after 15 years, he was the first Croatian premier to visit the former enemy). He said that "there is no alternative to the normalization of relations" between the two countries and added that Croatia would support Serbia and Montenegro in its aspirations to join the EU.

The Croatian daily newspaper Novi list responded that Croatians will "soon again be living in the same state with the Serbs, where the capital would no longer be called Belgrade but Brussels".

It voiced the concern of many Europhobes, who are not yet ready for reconciliation with the Serbs, although the war has been over for almost a decade.

The latest polls on Ivo Sanader's popularity show a drastic fall: 64% think that he is leading Croatia in the wrong direction.

A university graduate from central Croatia thinks the prevailing reasons for Europhobia are "fear of the unknown and ignorance". She feels that there is not enough information on exactly how the

Article says that a dramatic shift in public opinion during 2004 made the idea of joining the European Union less popular among Croatians.