Slovenia and Croatia: The Aftermath of Italian, German, and Serbian Mass Population Movements and EU Accession

Abstract

By the mid-1990s, it would be difficult to miss the impact of ethnic separation on a fractured Yugoslavia. All six republics would become independent. First came Slovenia and Croatia, then Macedonia and BiH, before the founding of a rump Yugoslavia including only Serbia and Montenegro [the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY)]. Macedonia, the FRY, and a substantially unmixed BiH nevertheless feature considerable diversity — even for Serbia with its massive influx of Serbian expellees and refugees.1 After being renamed as the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro in 2003, the FRY itself fractured into two countries in the wake of Montenegro’s independence referendum, before Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008.