In this paper I write about the disenchantment dramatically felt at the end of the Croatian road towards the EU. After a number of years in which both political elites (HDZ and SDP) in the country recognized the EU as a fundamental political goal it seams that today it is recognized as a lesser of two evils. The question is whether to join the Union which does not look remotely attractive as it looked twenty years ago or to stay in a black hole consisting of the countries which once belonged to Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia minus Slovenia plus Albania. The Euro crisis which exploded in front of our eyes and the inability of the existing institutions to solve it look to a new member dramatically unattractive. The recession in Croatia at the same time creates an environment in which the radical solutions and ideologies again gain popularity especially among the younger population. The paper consists of three segments. In the first one I give a short overview of the Croatian road towards the membership in the Union and show how in the beginning it looked as if the EU had both the carrot and the stick. However, after allowing the war in former Yugoslavia to escalate beyond the darkest predictions the credibility of the Union was damaged for first time. The Euro crisis damaged it for the second time.
In the second segment I will write about the unwilling Europeanization and the reasons why even the most reasonable reforms asked by the EU were recognized as the unnecessary bullying of the Union. While in the concluding segment I present the potentially radical response to the current economic and political crisis in the country. I will argue that the process of becoming a new EU member is extremely beneficial for a candidate only if the EU really has a carrot and a stick and at the moment it has neither.
Name: Zoran Kurelić
Name: Zoran Kurelić
Citizenship: Croatian
Focus: Contemporary Political Theory, Post-Socialist Nationalism and Liberalism
Career: since 2000: Assistant professorat Faculty of Philosophy Zagreb; since 2003:Professor at Faculty of Philosophy Zagreb
