Croatia became the 28th member of the European Union ten years ago and has since fulfilled its most important strategic goals and somewhat reduced the development gap with the 'old' members, but due to the opening of European doors for its workers, it also suffers a large outflow of residents.
In an article on the occasion of the anniversary, the Croatian agency Hina today assesses that joining the EU is one of the most important events in Croatia's history, which, along with membership in NATO, which it managed to achieve four years earlier, was its main foreign policy goal since gaining independence.
Croatia applied for EU membership on February 21, 2003. The European Commission approved the request in April 2004.
Already two months later, on June 18, 2004, Croatia officially received the status of a candidate for membership and it was decided that pre-accession negotiations would begin in March 2005, but with the condition of full cooperation with the Hague Court, which insisted on the arrest of General Ante, who had escaped at that time. Cash.
The negotiations were therefore postponed for several months. They began on October 3, 2005, after the then chief prosecutor of The Hague, Karla del Ponte, confirmed Croatia's full cooperation with The Hague Court.
Croatian negotiations lasted a long time, five years and nine months, longer than with any current EU member. The last chapters were closed on June 30, 2011, and after signing the accession agreement and ratification in the member states, Croatia entered the EU on July 1, 2013.
The negotiations were burdened by cooperation with the Hague Court and the Slovenian blockade due to the bilateral dispute over the border, but also by the fatigue of enlargement in the then member states. It was clear even then that Croatia had caught the last train and that after it there would be no expansion for a long time.
The previous enlargement from 2004, when ten countries joined at once, and the delayed accession of Bulgaria and Romania three years later can be considered a part of it, was more of a geopolitical project to unify Europe after the end of the Cold War, so there was less insistence on meeting the criteria , and looked more through the fingers for a higher goal.
Croatia did not have this advantage, so it was measured by a much stricter yardstick, and the EU was in no hurry to finish the negotiations as soon as possible, writes Hina.
Since January 1 this year, Croatia has been a member of the Eurozone and the Schengen area, which politicians consider to be the fulfillment of all the goals of European integration.
In the decade of membership, Croatia successfully held its first presidency of the EU Council in the first half of 2020, even though it was an 'accidental chairman'.
Great Britain, which was supposed to preside over the EU in the second half of 2017, announced that it was giving up because of the referendum decision on Brexit. That's why the previously established order of presidency was changed, and instead of the second half of 2026, Croatia got the first half of 2020.
The first Croatian presidency will be remembered for the corona virus pandemic, due to which many planned meetings were cancelled.
Before joining the EU, the Croatian economy fell into a recession that lasted more than six years. The total drop in real GDP in the period from 2009 to 2014 was 12,6 percent. It was only in 2019 that GDP exceeded the level of 2008, which means that ten years have been lost.
From 2015, the GDP began to grow until 2020, when a large drop of 8,6 percent was recorded due to the corona virus pandemic. However, the economy quickly recovered and in 2021 growth of 13,1 percent was recorded, and in 2022 growth slowed to 6,3 percent.
Croatia recovered the fastest from the pandemic and compared to the pre-pandemic 2019, it had a growth of 11,8 percent, which is why it is the first in the EU ahead of Poland, which had a growth of 11,2 percent.
Other member states in that period had single-digit growth - Slovenia, 7,8 percent, Denmark, 7,6 percent, etc. Average GDP growth in the EU in that period was 2,9 percent.
GDP per capita in Croatia in 2013 was 61 percent of the EU average, and last year it reached 73 percent of the European average.
In the year of accession to the EU, Croats had a GDP per capita of 10.440 euros, and according to the estimate for 2022, it rose to 17.240 euros.
In terms of GDP per capita, Croatia is better than Slovakia and Greece, which are at 68 percent of the European average, and Bulgaria, which is at 59 percent.
According to the real individual consumption (SIP), according to which the European statistical agency Eurostat measures the standard of citizens, in 2022 Croatia is at 75 percent of the European average.
SIP shows how many goods and services individuals consumed, whether they paid for them themselves or the cost was borne by the state or non-profit organizations, and expressed in purchasing power standards, it eliminates differences in prices between countries.
Croatia is moving away from the back according to that criterion as well. It overtook Slovakia, which is at 73 percent of the European average, and Hungary (72 percent), while previously it was better only than Bulgaria (67 percent).
At the same time, according to SIP, it is close to Greece (78 percent) and Estonia (79 percent). According to SIP, Croatia has grown by 10 percentage points in the last ten years - in 2013, it was 65 percent of the European average.
However, Romania had a much higher SIP growth, from 48 percent in 2013 to 88 percent in 2022, and Poland from 51 percent to 86 percent.
In order to reach the European average in the foreseeable future, Croatia should grow much faster than until now.
Potential growth is negatively affected by population decline and low productivity, but reforms that would lead to efficient public administration and a better judiciary would have a positive effect.
The advantages of EU membership are even more visible when Croatia is compared with some countries of the former Yugoslavia. For example, Serbia's GDP per capita was 2013 percent of the EU average in 40, and 2022 percent in 44. Bosnia and Herzegovina went from 30 percent in 2013 to 35 percent in 2022.
Croatia is also doing well according to other indicators, it has an unemployment rate that has never been lower. In May of this year, the registered unemployment rate was 5,6 percent, which is the lowest rate since 1989. According to data from 2021, the employment rate in Croatia was 68,2 percent, while the European average was 73,1 percent.
It also has good fiscal results, the public debt is on a downward trajectory and according to government projections, it should be below 60 percent already next year, which is allowed according to the Maastricht criteria.
However, like other less developed new EU members, it had a large population outflow in the past decade. According to the 2021 census, Croatia has 3.871.833 inhabitants, which is 413.056 people or 9,64 percent less than ten years earlier.
In part, this is the result of membership in the EU, because there are no restrictions on the movement of labor on the single European market, and many Croatian citizens left for work and a better life in richer member states.
The experiences of other countries show that the departure stops, that is, immigration and emigration are equalized once the level of economic development of about 80 percent of the EU average is reached. An even bigger Croatian problem is the big difference in the development of certain parts of the country. Thus, in terms of GDP, the City of Zagreb is already at 131 percent of the EU average, and in the eastern counties GDP is below 40 percent of the European average.
Hina estimates that ten years after the last enlargement, none of the candidate countries is even close to membership and that Croatia could remain the youngest member for another ten or more years.
Although the Russian attack on Ukraine brought some changes in the enlargement policy and geopolitical aspects are again at play, it is difficult to expect an increase in the number of members according to the rules by which the Union functions today, and their change is not on the horizon.
The agency reminds that for these reasons Ukraine and Moldova received candidate status last year, and Georgia received potential candidate status.
Back in 2003, at the summit in Thessaloniki, the EU promised the countries of the Western Balkans that they would become members when they met the conditions.
Officially, the EU continues to emphasize that it is committed to enlargement, and the countries of the Western Balkans emphasize that this is their strategic goal. However, what it looks like in practice is perhaps best illustrated by a sentence that is often heard in Brussels: "The Union pretends that it really cares about enlargement, while the countries of the Western Balkans pretend to implement the necessary reforms", concludes Hina.
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