Negotiating Croatian membership of the European Union : is membership by 2010 achievable?

Abstract

The end of the Cold War and the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe led to a peaceful democratic change and a transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. This also made an impact on Croatia since it was declared independent in June 1991. It is worth saying that the abovementioned region is part of Europe and their citizens are willing to have a European future primarily by joining the European Union. In fact, Croatia has submitted its formal application for EU membership on 21 February 2003 and it was given the go-ahead to open membership talks by the Council the following year, on June 2004 and hence, it was confirmed as a candidate country. On December 2004, the EU insisted that talks would be opened in spring 2005 given that Croatia cooperates fully with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). However, these conditions were not fulfilled and membership talks formally opened in October 2005. The Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) between Croatia and the EU was signed in October 2001 and entered into force in February 2005. The screening process was initiated in October 2005 and was terminated in June 2006. Croatia has so far opened twenty-two chapters of the Acquis and has temporarily closed seven chapters. However, Slovenia continues to block progress in twelve accession chapters due to the unsettled border dispute between the two countries. Unless the dispute is not resolved quickly, Croatia could fail to achieve its goal of completing EU talks this year (2009) and joining the Union in 2010 or 2011. Other obstacles which may delay Croatia's accession negotiations include the fight against organised crime and corruption which prevail in different sectors such as the judiciary and public administration as well as the pursuit of war crimes trials and access to International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to documents.