To Europe and back – The Croatian EU accession process and its outcomes

Abstract

This article reviews the domestic processes involved inCroatian accession to the EU. This poses interesting questions inthe light of growing public euro-scepticism inspite of consensus among the political elites and a media which was, on the whole, sympathetic to the project. The Croatian government, after some years of unofficial isolation, took some political gambles, presenting accession more or less as the sole aspect of the country's foreign policy and investing inita significant amount of political capital as a result of a policy of attaining as high a speed of accession as possible. This had an impact on the effectiveness of the governments communications strategy. Reviewing the main challenges, the author concludes that the economic effects of accession, including as regards the labour market, may be only weakly positive, but a Croatia operating outside the EU would still face many of the same obstacles. Croatia continues to face serious challenges indefin- ing a strategy for how EU membership will assist its social and economic develop- ment.