‘Cooperative’ Croatia pushes ever-harder for early EU accession date

By David Cronin

Date: 22/04/04

IN SOME ways Croatia is closer to the European Union than some of the countries joining the bloc next week.

At around €6,200, for example, its gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is higher than that of Poland, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia and Malta.

And it has a robust rate of economic growth - some 4-5% in recent years - fuelled to a considerable degree by the resurgence of the tourist industry following the slump caused by the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Therefore, the European Commission's positive assessment of Zagreb's EU membership bid appears to be a logical recognition of economic achievements made in the past few years - notwithstanding that the country has an unemployment rate of 19%.

Should the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague continue to give assurances that Croatia is cooperating in the handing over of indicted war criminals on its territory, then EU leaders may declare that the western Balkan state can start accession talks at the June summit.

"Cooperation with the tribunal appears to be the only political criteria of serious moment," says Nicholas Whyte, Balkans specialist with the International Crisis Group. "With almost all the other stuff, the government has really cleaned up its act. There have been moves to get rid of nationalist rhetoric and there appears to be no sympathy for the extremists in Bosnia."

A few years ago, the international community would have had good reasons to be wary of current Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, who leads the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), party of Franjo Tudjman, Croatia's first post-independence president.

The hardline nationalist Tudjman was one of the architects of the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia. Under his tutelage, a massive offensive was undertaken to drive the country's 600,000-strong Serb minority out of the country.

Had he not died in 1999, it is likely that Tudjman would have been placed on the "wanted" list by the tribunal in The Hague.

One of his generals, Ante Gotovina, is still being sought by ICTY for allegedly colluding with Tudjman in planning a massacre of Croatian Serbs in the Krajina region.

While Sanader has extradited other indicted generals, he claims to have intelligence reports that Gotovina is not on Croatian territory.

But the UK government has stated it will not endorse Zagreb's membership bid unless it liaises fully with ICTY.

Aside from that, there is widespread agreement that Sanader has tried hard to prove the HDZ has been reformed as a moderate centre-right force.

His most symbolic gesture came on 7 January, when he attended a Serbian Orthodox Christmas celebration in Zagreb.

To general astonishment, Sanader extended the compliments of the season to his Croatian Serb hosts with the traditional Serb greeting "Christ is born".

In addition, Zagreb facilitated the return of more than 80,000 refugees - more than half of whom are ethnic Serbs - in 2000-03, spending €637 million on repairing houses damaged during the war.

Yet there are still almost 250,000 Croatian refugees in Serbia - and former UN envoy to the Balkans Carl Bildt recently contended that, unless greater attention is paid to them, they will become pawns in the political chess played by xenophobes in Belgrade.

On the institutional front, Zagreb still faces a mammoth task in reforming the judiciary. According to the Commission's 2004 report published this week, there is a backlog of 1.3 million civil cases awaiting to be heard by the courts (no reduction from the previous year), and there remains a dearth of experienced judges in the country. The report also complains that judges have to regularly perform tasks that should be assigned to clerical staff.

Croatia-watchers also say that motivation among the civil service is poor - mainly due to low pay.

Another sensitive issue is Croatia's ongoing dispute over both land and maritime borders with Slovenia.

Tensions between Zagreb and Ljubljana flared up last year over a Croatian plan to establish an exclusive economic zone in the Adriatic, which would deprive the Slovenes of direct access to international waters.

Yet relations are now more cordial, with Slovenia backing Croatia's quest to join the EU.

Officially, Sanader has set the objective of having Croatia joining the EU at the same time as Romania and Bulgaria in 2007. In Brussels, that aim is seen as unrealistic, as any negotiations would be opened towards the end of this year at the earliest, giving Croatia less than two-and-a-half years to adapt its national laws to the Union's bulging acquis communautaire.

But Aida Liha from the Institute for International Relations in Zagreb contends that membership in 2007 would be possible if Croatia shows it has the capacity to absorb pre-accession aid.

"If today was 1993, Croatia would have been in a stronger position than most of the acceding countries," she says. "We had a mix of the kind of very well-organized social economy you see today in Sweden, with socialist and communist economic planning. In 1993, if we hadn't had the war, we would have been in a much better position."

German deputy Doris Pack, who heads the MEPs' delegation to south-east Europe, believes that 11 years later, the time has come to open the door to Zagreb.

"Much still needs to be done - for example, reforms in the judiciary, the right to return of refugees and restitution of property," the Christian Democrat says. "But Croatia will still be able to become an EU member state in this decade."

http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/countries/detailed-country-information/croatia/index_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/countries/detailed-country-information/croatia/index_en.htm

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