Croatia eagerly awaits EU accession talks

Date: 17/06/04

By Helena Varendorff

CROATIA has been anticipating the EU summit that starts today (17 June), as Prime Minister Ivo Sanader is confident that Union leaders will announce when his country can open accession negotiations.

His confidence seems justly placed as the EU-25 are set to announce that talks with Zagreb will start early next year.

The local media have been quoting “sources” saying that the negotiations are going to begin before the end of the year or early in 2005. The speculation has added to a restlessness among the people to know where their country stands.

One gets a feeling this is an 'all or nothing' game for a nation where everyone is convinced that they already are - and have always been - part of Western, 'civilized' Europe, and where people do not like mentioning that Croatia is now administratively considered as a western Balkan country.

However, by obsessively focusing on an accession date, media and politicians fail to pay attention to the difficult transformation the country has to go through to qualify for EU membership.

“The Croatian media are concentrating on the starting date of accession negotiations,” said Davor Denero, a Zagreb-based political analyst, but “they are not aware of, nor have they been reporting on, political or social reforms that have been going on in Poland, the Czech Republic or even in neighbouring Slovenia“.

The general feeling towards joining the EU is positive. “Most of the people do strongly wish that this will happen as soon as possible,” a Zagreb lawyer said. “Even those who might not really like the idea of being an EU member, such as fishermen or farmers afraid of competition, are not doing much against it,” he added.

“They know the country would undergo many reforms. However, there is an awareness that these reforms are in Croatia's interest, that they belong to a process of 'civilizing' the country.”

There has been a sharp U-turn in the policy of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) since its re-election at the end of 2003.

The former coalition government of ex-prime minister Ivica Racan was working hard to enter the Union. It started numerous reforms and managed to pull Croatia out of the isolation it was dragged into during former president Franjo Tudjman's autocratic nationalist regime.

But during its four years in opposition, the HDZ was not pro-EU and had been blocking the government's efforts to approach the Union. “There has been almost a 180 degrees turn in HDZ's policy. Now, HDZ holds that this is the only way forward,” a Croatian analyst said.

There is no political survival for a government leading a different policy.

If the desirability of joining the EU is no longer questioned, the public debate is focusing on getting an accession date. This is where Denero sees problems, as “though most Croatian politicians

insist on the date of accession being 2007, almost no one is talking about problems that Croatia will face” once the negotiations process has begun.

As media and politicians attach so much importance to this, what could happen if Croatia does not get a date to start negotiations and to join the EU?

There are certain fears that Croatia could follow Turkey's case: it could become an EU candidate but have the start of accession negotiations constantly postponed.

Going home with empty hands from Brussels may also be understood as a failure for premier Ivo Sanader's policy and give more power to the conservative nationalist stream within his party.

“One should not forget that a large part of the members of the ruling party are very conservative. There is a consensus that Sanader has managed to 'discipline' those members, at least to the extent that they are not working against him,” the analyst explained.

“He had an 'educating' role in civilizing those conservative members.”

Davor Denero agrees that not achieving what is expected from the Brussels summit - the date - “could lead to a new 'Tudjmanization' of the HDZ”, by bringing the party and the country back to times similar to those during Tudjman's nationalist rule.

Denero believes “entry is technically not possible before 2009”, when the mandate of the newly elected European Parliament will end.

In addition to the criteria each EU candidate country had to comply with, Croatia had to fulfil some additional conditions - most of them leftovers of the Yugoslav wars: development of its democratic system, return of refugees and protection of ethnic minorities, and cooperation with The Hague war crimes tribunal.

The most contentious issues sapping Croatia's EU ambitions are the arrest of Ante Gotovina, the ex-general indicted of war crimes by The Hague tribunal, and the problem of the fishing zone in the Croatian Adriatic. Otherwise, “Croatia has been doing its homework,” Denero says.

“But the question remains whether the EU has the capacity to absorb Croatia. Croatia's membership in the EU will depend more on the internal situation within the EU than on Croatia itself.”

• Helena Varendorff is a Croatian freelance journalist.

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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