After briefly summarising the end of the Tudjman era, initial European procrastination and the ‘swing’ of the January 2000 elections, this article attempts to analyse the main issues on which Croatia’s entry into the European Union depends: the Serbian minority, privatisation, the arrest of war criminals, cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Croatia's Moves Toward the EU (1992-2007)
On 4 October 2005, with support from Austria–its ‘sponsor’ within the Union–Croatia finally received the green light from the European authorities to open membership talks. In June 2006, Olli Rehn, the EU Commissioner for Enlargement, said that it should be the next country in line for EU membership in around 2010, after Romania and Bulgaria in 2007.
The Croats’ long and bumpy road to ‘Europe’ is informed by the thorny problems on which Zagreb and Brussels are struggling to find common ground: treatment of the Serb minority, cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague concerning Croatian war criminals, bilateral relations with Serbia and privatisations. Added to this is Croatia’s virulent nationalism, after its breakaway from the Serb-dominated Yugoslav Federation, which may perhaps make it difficult for it to adjust to the European Union’s ‘crypto-federalist’ way of working.
After a brief look at the end of the Tudjman era, Europe’s initial prevarications and the ‘turning point’ of the January 2000 elections, this article will attempt to analyse the main issues that condition the entry of Croatia into the European Union: the Serb minority, privatisations, the arrest of war criminals and judicial cooperation with the ICTY.
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