Why croatia should join the eu

They have done so because they do not want the EU to assume more powers. Either they do not trust Brussels or they do not want to see their influence back home diminished. Her success last April in pulling off, against all the odds, an agreement between Serbia and Kosovo over the status of the partially recognized state was testament to her perseverance and skill as a diplomat.

Yet she only got this chance because no member state wanted to claim responsibility for such a highly complex issue. They delegated it to Ashton because they did not want to be associated with failure. It shows that the EU, however big and ungainly, can work effectively if the member states stop meddling or undermining the high representative. Instead, once Croatia has settled in, the EU needs to think hard about what use it should make of possibly its most powerful instrument: the promise of membership.

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Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center. Carnegie Europe. Issues Projects Regions Blogs. Sign Up for Strategic Europe If you enjoyed reading this, subscribe for more! There is yet another crucial aspect easily forgotten when taking a purely economic view of the advantages and disadvantages of enlargement. The enlargement strategy for the western Balkans is a tool to secure peace in the region.

Croatia is a nation where experiences of war are still fresh; they know how fragile peace can be. This experience can strengthen the European concept. Croatia's entry is also a big step for neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia. Croatia assumes a model function for the other western Balkan candidates and could become the motor for reconciliation.

Croatia's entry should encourage the other candidates in the region not to neglect their reform efforts even though the path to the EU is long and rocky. An important signal: just days ahead of Croatia's EU entry, the German Bundestag opted to start accession talks with Serbia as well.

It is a promise that European solidarity does not end at its current borders, that the welcome to new member Croatia was not the last welcome in the union.

Differing views on coping with youth unemployment are set to divide EU leaders at a two-day summit in Brussels. Finance ministers, however, agreed on who will have to pay first when it comes to future bank bailouts.

European Union ministers have unanimously recommended the launch of accession talks with Serbia by January and negotiations with Kosovo on a lesser stabilization and association deal.

Croatia is set to join the European Union on July 1. Croatian President Ivo Josipovic talks to DW about his country's membership, his plans to adopt the Euro, and about the situation in Syria. Visit the new DW website Take a look at the beta version of dw. Go to the new dw. More info OK. There is no great opposition to accession, but not much enthusiasm either. The accession is viewed as a process which cannot and should not be resisted, but one which depends entirely on the decisions of the EU central states.

This opinion is not baseless, but it does not account for individual responsibility of democratic and economic development. A possible solution can be found in renewing the process of negotiation and a long-term strengthening of democratic values through civil society, but also through the respective political institutions.

This is where it saw its foreign policy niche. Croatian diplomacy considers the opening of accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania in March to be the great success of its presidency. Another accomplishment is the establishment of an EU fund for helping the Western Balkan countries fight against the crisis caused by the pandemic. The EU has earmarked a financial aid package of more than 3. It was stressed that the way in which the EU and the Western Balkans have been dealing with the pandemic is proof that challenges are easier to overcome together.

Despite the disappointing conclusions for the Western Balkan states, the Zagreb Declaration of 6 May states that the EU is also a community of values. In particular, item 7 of the Declaration emphasises the importance of democracy and the rule of law. The process of European integration was the answer to political conflicts within and between European countries. This process began even before the Cold War between the West and the East, which offered very different types of political orders and ideologies.

Initially established as the European Coal and Steel Community, the process of integration then brought about the European Economic Community, a customs union and finally the EU became a common market.

So, at the beginning it was an alliance between economic and financial interests. In the end, economic integration also turned into political integration.

Throughout, it has become clear that should economic integration be effective, the development of political institutions are required on which it can depend. The prevailing formula was that free market economy meaning capitalism and liberal democracy were irreversibly tied.

It is precisely because it questions this formula regarding the ties between capitalism and democracy that China currently presents such an important phenomenon.

To wit, the Chinese example has shown that capitalist economy can also develop in a one-party dictatorship. It turned out that market economy does not require a liberal-democratic order. This Chinese combination of a dictatorship and market economy has fired up the imagination of the European radical-right, which had already wanted to tear down liberal ideology and its political institutions.

Until recently, the Union was successful in ensuring peace for its member states, enabling the development of human rights and the freedom of individuals, ensuring economic development based on a market economy, and establishing mechanisms for some sort of solidarity between members and the preservation of the social state. These are clearly not just material, but also ideological values.

The EU can be effective and influential only if it is an ideological community. The undermining of its fundamental, liberal-democratic ideological paradigm would lead to its breakup, just like the collapse of the communist ideology resulted in the collapse of the Warsaw military-political pact. But today, liberal democracy does not only face threats from outside, but also from the illiberal systems that are taking shape within the EU itself.

Hence the crisis was not just economic, but also political. This conflict is also spreading to the understanding of energy politics.

The controversy related to the construction of the Nord Stream 2, for example, clearly shows that. Furthermore, China is emerging as an ever-growing competitor of the EU. Global challenges facing the EU are thus getting bigger every day, and Croatian politics is often unaware of them. Admittedly, as a small country, it cannot have a significant influence on international relations. Actually, the key question is whether the EU wants to, and can it assert itself as an independent and influential subject of global politics, a new global player.

Of course, this ambition requires a new policy toward the US, China and Russia. The first test will be talks on establishing a fund for the recovery from the economic crisis caused by the corona pandemics; this will show to what extent the EU really is a community of solidarity.

The government believes that it can find a foreign policy niche in which to establish itself as an effective player in the EU enlargement of the Western Balkans. Of course, the activity of Croatian foreign policy contributed to that, but again it turned out that due to the need to reach a consensus, decisions in the EU are difficult to make. It is interesting that their scepticism has persevered despite the obvious strengthening of Chinese and Russian influence in the Western Balkans.

It is also obvious that there is a lack of coordination between US and EU politics toward this region, and that each is acting alone and is governed only by their own interest. Another issue lies in the fact that the Western Balkan countries that are already in accession talks—Montenegro and Serbia—have not improved the state of their democracy, despite the fact that they succeeded in meeting some of the conditions for accession.

On the contrary, they have even regressed, and turned from half-democracies into hybrid regimes. Naturally, there is also the fact that five EU members do not recognise Kosovo as an independent country. But, these problems notwithstanding, it seems important that Croatia has unambiguously decided to support the EU enlargement process to the Western Balkans.

It has thus demonstrated that it has accepted its geopolitical position, as well as its political and economic interests. Despite the fact that the Zagreb summit did not unambiguously declare EU enlargement in this region as its political goal, and only discussed the process, Croatia succeeded in proving that it was interested in the enlargement policy.

From their part, the countries of Western Balkans have clearly stated their desire to join the EU. Of course, this is not a process in which they are the dominant subjects. A much greater challenge for the EU is its attitude to the idea of being affirmed as an independent global political subject.

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