Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/world ... union.html

As European Union Beckons, Allure Fades for Wary Croatia

HARMICA, Croatia — Zoran Sluga has a small family farm here on the border with Slovenia, his 300-year-old barn filled with thousands of squawking chickens.

But if Croatians vote to join the European Union next Sunday, Mr. Sluga’s simple business will become a lot more complicated. The cages he keeps his hens in will not meet the group’s rules, requiring expensive upgrades. Italian egg producers, given access to Croatian markets, are likely to undercut his prices. Mr. Sluga believes that his very way of life is a stake. And for what? he asks.

“See what happened to Greece,” he said. “They got billions from the E.U. and it did not work out.”

Much has changed in the decade since Croatia first applied to join the European Union. What was once seen as a rich man’s club — which Croatia was eager to join — no longer looks like such a clear ticket to prosperity. Today’s European Union is mired in a crippling debt crisis, which has pushed some of its members to the brink of bankruptcy and threatened its very essence.

Recent polls show that Croats are still likely to vote yes. Then, the 27 European Union countries are expected to ratify their membership and Croatia will become part of the group on July 1 — in all likelihood, the last new member for many years.

Srdjan Dumicic, the director of Ipsos Puls, a company that has conducted several polls on the subject in recent years, said that support had been dwindling in the past few weeks and could narrow, according to the latest poll that has not yet been published. Some Croatians joke, he said, that joining now is like arriving at the party at 2 a.m. Half the revelers are drunk. Half have gone home.

“It’s not the party it was at midnight,” Mr. Dumicic said.

Even the recently elected prime minister, Zoran Milanovic, talks about the prospect of European Union membership without much fervor.

Mr. Milanovic, a social democrat, says the pluses outweigh the minuses. He emphasizes the benefits of full access to a market of 500 million consumers and of gaining about $2 billion a year in development aid in the next couple of years, though future assistance is less certain.

And he sees progress in the overhaul of Croatia’s legal system, which the European Union insisted on.

But he also says that the events of recent years have proved that membership does not guarantee success and that Croatians need to be ready to work hard in a highly competitive environment.

“The working title could be ‘Curb That Enthusiasm,’ ” Mr. Milanovic said in an interview, slightly mangling the title of Larry David’s HBO series.

Critics go much further. They say that recent events have proved that Germany and France make the big decisions and that a country the size of Croatia, with a population of just 4.5 million, will have little say.

They worry also about joining just in time to pay the bill for Greece and other debt-laden countries. And they worry that Croatia, with a long Adriatic coastline, will find itself confronting a flood of immigrants, as Spain, Italy and Greece have.

“In the European Parliament, we would be 12 members out of more than 740; in the Council of Ministers, 7 votes out of more than 350,” said Marjan Bosnjak, secretary of the Council for Croatia, an association opposing European Union membership. “We will be a statistical error. Who will give a damn about what Croatians think?”

To get this far, Croatia, which could not escape the vicious fighting that broke out in the 1990s after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, had to subject itself to a European Union-style makeover. Once deeply corrupt, the government was forced to pass 350 new laws. No one knows how many documents were exchanged because the Croatians stopped counting after 150,000 pages. About 3,000 Croatians worked on the project, from diplomats to translators.

The reach of the European Union is often underestimated, as it tries to create an even playing field among its members. Take the egg business. No detail seems overlooked. The union’s rules say that the chicken cages must allow at least 750 square centimeters per hen and contain a nest, litter, perch and “clawing board.” These requirements are amusing to Mr. Sluga, the farmer. “The chickens have more rights than humans in the E.U.,” he joked.

But he and other Croatian egg producers see little humor in the bills they face. Mr. Sluga estimates that he will have to spend $100,000 on new cages or $13,000 for used equipment. The alternative is to allow his chickens to roam free either indoors or out, something he finds bizarre because, he said, the hens can — and do — eat their own excrement under such conditions. And such an operation would require a lot more labor, he said.

Along the coast, Croatia’s shipbuilders worry that they will not survive either. European Union rules ban state subsidies to most industries, and Croatia is being forced to privatize its shipyards as a condition of entry. In the northern coastal city of Rijeka, trade union officials and managers both argue that not only their jobs are at risk but also the jobs of hundreds or thousands of others who produce components and services for them.

At the 3. Maj shipyard (meaning May 3, the date of liberation from Germany in World War II), 60 employees in a work force of about 2,700 have already left and a further 240 will be lost in a restructuring. But about 450 companies, roughly half of which are Croatian, work with the yard and would be badly hit if it goes out of business. According to Edi Kucan, president and chief executive officer of the shipyard, the company accounts for 1.5 percent of Croatian exports and up to 34 percent of all incomes in the area. The consequence of the shipyard’s closing would be an economic “collapse” in Rijeka, he said.

Yet experts say the process for joining the European Union has been a civilizing factor for a country that has struggled to come to terms with the legacy of atrocities committed in the wars of the 1990s.

Tvrtko Jakovina, a historian at Zagreb University, said that it was a shock when other Central and East European countries, including neighboring Slovenia, joined the European Union in 2004. “It was the first time ever that all Croatian territory was left out of some sort of European integration,” Mr. Jakovina said.

The European Union refused to start membership negotiations until the Croatians helped arrest a former general, Ante Gotovina, who was later convicted of war crimes by a United Nations tribunal.

Brussels also insisted on special negotiations to deal with judicial issues and the reform of the court system. Corruption has been a persistent problem in Croatia, where a former prime minister, Ivo Sanader, is currently on trial fighting corruption charges.

Jelena Berkovic of GONG, a nongovernmental organization that focuses on democracy and human rights, said that the demands had a positive influence on Croatia but might not have gone far enough.

“Whether this change in the law and political culture is irreversible is something we will have to wait and see,” she said. Her group has also complained that the vote is being rushed, with the referendum campaign crammed into 20 days.

The campaign against European Union membership is being run from a cramped three-room office with no heating. The only visitor before 10 a.m. one recent morning was the landlord asking about the rent. Mr. Bosnjak, the secretary of the Council for Croatia, said the council represented about 25 small groups that together had just $4,000 to $5,000 to spend. (The government said it planned to spend about $800,000 on television spots and a pro-integration information campaign.)

Mr. Bosnjak, who spent most of his working life in Australia as a government official before returning to Croatia, argues that the country’s short-lived independence from Yugoslavia will be squandered.

“Our industry, our economy is not competitive,” he said, suggesting that Croatia’s assets were ripe for European conglomerates to pick. “It’s a race between the Germans and the Italians who will gain greater political and economic influence in Croatia.”

Yet even opponents of European Union membership seem to think that the country has nowhere else to go. As he mulled what to do about his hen cages, Mr. Sluga said that he feared that his no vote would be in vain.

“I am aware that we will have to enter the E.U.,” he said, “but I also know that nothing good is coming.”

stećče dobar tekst imam samo primjedbu.......zašto nepišeš naHrvatskom ???

In this subforum is written only in English.

my bed men.......

A very good article indeed.

This pretty much sums up what I have to say on the matter.

The difficult process to gain acceptance might have brought the greatest benefits in terms of reforms and the attacks on corruption.

Looks like 66% voted yes but I think the turnout was 42%. I echo Ruža Tomašić's thoughts regarding the election: Ne treba se veseliti ulasku Hrvatske u EU jer nas čeka težak posao i mnoštvo obveza "We shouldn't celebrate Croatia's entrance into the EU because hard work and many obligations await us."

But I think she is correct that we will have to deal with our problems ourselves. Yes we saw what happened to Greece but we need to learn from their mistakes and work on creating a self-reliant Croatia.

http://www.hrt.hr/index.php?id=refeu&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=149608&tx_ttnews[backPid]=760&cHash=46fa8b4f88

I saw this commentary and it made me think about this thread...

http://jurist.org/dateline/2012/04/ann- ... tia-eu.php

Is EU Membership the Best Option for Croatia?

JURIST Guest Columnist Ann Eisenberg, Cornell University Law School Class of 2012, is an Articles and Symposium Editor for the Cornell International Law Journal. She questions whether EU membership is the best decision for Croatia given the current debt crisis...

By the time Croatia joins the EU on July 1, 2013, it will have engaged in a nationwide overhaul for over a decade. A mountain of new legislation, stalled negotiations, war crimes scandals and a dispute with neighboring Slovenia have all prolonged the path to membership. But, has the struggle been worth the effort? Croatia is finally getting on board just as other member countries may be considering jumping ship amidst bankruptcies, the questionable future of the euro and ongoing debt crises. Croatians indeed wonder if they have joined just in time to pay the bill for Greece.

Like other candidate countries, Croatia's government needed to meet the Copenhagen Criteria in order to join, a benchmark that is a central concern for the European Commission, which is in charge of representing the EU's interests. The Criteria require that candidate countries establish democracy, rule of law, a market-based economy and a commitment to European political and economic union. Croatia was also required to accept the EU legal framework and incorporate EU law into its national legislation. Croatia met the Criteria as of June 2004, when the European Council made the country an official candidate.

Among Croatia's more difficult reforms was the total revamping of the judiciary, which included addressing an extensive backlog of cases and the tendency to have excessively lengthy proceedings often resulting in cases being brought to the European Court of Human Rights. As a formerly totalitarian society, reformers in Croatia were faced with promoting a novel and foreign culture of rule of law. Biased lower court adjudicative proceedings for war crimes were also problematic as the national origin of defendants and victims frequently influenced case outcomes.

Many of the problems facing Croatia, and the judiciary in particular, stemmed from the 1990s war of independence from the Yugoslav Federation. The EU would not even begin negotiations until the Croatian government helped arrest Ante Gotovina, a former Lieutenant General who had led the bloody Operation Storm against Serb civilians and prisoners of war. Zagreb's perceived half-heartedness in hunting down Gotovina, in addition to other war crimes suspects, delayed Croatia's EU bid. Interethnic animosities related to the bloody struggle persisted into the early 21st century, infecting judicial proceedings.

Croatian sentiments have been deeply divided on the question of EU membership, with support waning in 2012, from its high point several years prior. Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic stressed the benefits that would come with joining, such as access to 500 million additional consumers and an additional two billion dollars per year in development aid. All of Croatia's major political parties were also in favor of joining, as well as most of the minority Serb population. However, many citizens were concerned about the dominance of France and Germany, the unlikelihood of the powerful EU heeding any of Croatia's concerns in light of its relatively small size and the expensive changes that would need to be made on the ground.

Europe's recent economic struggles have not gone unnoticed by Croatians. As of the winter of 2012, the most glaring disincentive for Croatia's joining would have been the European debt crisis. Croatians realized that they may have joined just in time to pay the bill for Greece and other debt laden countries, and right when the EU had lost its luster with its debt burdened economies and bickering leaders. Croatia's increased momentum toward membership has seemed to walk in step with the EU's battle to float weak economies since 2009.

According to The New York Times, the EU's crisis "has produced the deepest tensions within the union in memory." The survival of the 17-year-old euro as a multinational currency is uncertain and the entirety of Europe continues to be stifled by an atmosphere of economic stagnation. The crisis quickly bled into politics, causing governmental transitions in Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Spain, Finland and Romania. Despite two bailouts, Greece continued to teeter on the brink of instability in early 2012, although commentators believe that a March 2012 bond swap may have proven a successful remedy.

On January 22, 2012, a poor turnout of Croatian citizens voted to join the EU. With 66 percent in favor and 33 percent against, the country of four and a half million will become the 28th member next year. In June 2011, the EU had given its final approval to Croatian membership after six years of renewed negotiations. With the vote, Croatia joined the 21st century flood of Balkan nations gaining membership pursuant to the June 2000 Feira European Council determination. In 2004, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia joined the EU. Romania and Bulgaria also joined in 2007.

Is there a poetic contradiction in the fact that Croatia gained independence a mere 20 years ago only to relinquish aspects of its autonomy to another struggling overseer? Some Croatians certainly think so. Nationalist groups, army veterans and right-wing activists in particular are wary of the loss of Croatia's sovereignty and feel that it demeans the 15,000 lives that were lost in a war for Croatia's national identity.

Other Croatians see it differently. "I would rather be with Germany and France than with Serbia and Bosnia," said one lawyer based in Zagreb. Indeed, as troubled as European economies may be, it is possible that Croatia is not better off without them, with its 13 percent unemployment rate and 61 billion dollar debt.

Now that this somewhat tepid marriage is official, Croatians are going to feel the changes while remaining uncertain of the benefits. Privatization of shipyards, upgrading of farms and the continued overhaul of the legal system are just several among many expensive measures that Croatia will have to make in order to comply with EU standards. These changes will be felt personally by farmers and shipyard workers, many of whom risk losing their jobs. Meanwhile, Croatia will maintain the status of "Active Observer" until it gains full membership, allowing it to watch the unfolding European story for another few months without feeling the direct sting of the crisis.

Ann Eisenberg received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Linguistics and French Cultural Studies from Cornell University. At Cornell Law School, Eisenberg was a student advocate in the Advanced International Human Rights Clinic, and was also a research assistant for the Somalia Constitution Making Project.

Suggested citation: Ann Eisenberg, Is EU Membership the Best Option for Croatia?, JURIST - Dateline, Apr. 29, 2012, http://jurist.org/dateline/2012/04/ann- ... tia-eu.php.