Croatia's accession is marked by public anxiety that it will be the latest fall guy of the EU political elite's neoliberal ideology
Croatia has become the 28th EU member state. The European leaders want us to believe that, in spite of the Union's current crisis, this clearly testifies to the EU's lasting transformative power, its undisputable international role, and the desirability of its political and economic model. The Croatian political elite wants its citizens to believe that the old dream of joining Europe, which framed the narrative that once legitimised the reasons for abandoning socialism and later Yugoslavia, is finally achieved.
But almost no one in Croatia believes that the morning after will bring a better life. After all, Croatia is the new European record-holder in low Euro-enthusiasm, with only 43.5% turnout at the EU referendum in 2012 and 21% turnout for the first elections for the European parliament earlier this year. The EU's self-congratulatory statements cannot hide a profound malaise about the EU's future either. In stark contrast to the 2004 enlargement and, to a lesser extent, the 2007 one, Croatian accession is marked by a general gloom and anxiety within the new member state as well as across the EU.
Since 1990, Croatia has gone through a series of transformations, including a brutal war, a nationalist autocracy and the Euro-compatible behaviour of the post-Tudjman elites. The £2bn external debt, part of which was inherited from Yugoslavia, now stands at about £40bn, which is close to 100% of the country's GDP. Once the most prosperous and developed of the Yugoslav republics, it now has almost no industry. Tourism – often cited as Croatia's biggest asset within the EU – cannot replace it. A tourist slogan once portrayed it as "a small country for a great holiday", but tourism amounts to less than 20% of the country's GDP.
The dubious privatisation agenda of the 1990s, facilitated by the aftermath of war and followed by the continuous neoliberal reforms of the 2000s, created enormous social gaps which include today an unemployment rate of almost 20%. It is no surprise that Croatia ranks third (with 51.8%) in Europe when it comes to unemployment among young people – just behind Greece and Spain. Croatian governments, of both nationalist right and social-democratic left, have followed obediently the EU's austerity advice, even before the accession. Indeed, the Croatian story resembles those we hear about other EU member states from southern Europe – which brings us to a unavoidable conclusion: on 1 July Croatia has not actually joined only the EU; in reality, it has become a fully-fledged member of the EU periphery.
It is hard to miss the historical irony here. At the end of the 1980s Yugoslavia was experiencing a sharp conflict between the developed north and underdeveloped south, a foreign debt crisis, IMF-imposed austerity measures resulting in high unemployment, strikes, institutional paralysis, a lack of solidarity and the rise of nationalism. Croatia seceded from the crumbling federation in 1991 only to join, two decades later, another multinational union where it meets strikingly similar problems.
Instead of facing – or at least admitting – these problems, the Croatian government organised a party on 30 June at Zagreb's central square. More than £800,000 was spent on the celebration ceremony, which included live coverage on national television of a grand reception with European leaders in attendance, although Angela Merkel disappointed the host by cancelling her participation. Just a few days before, a leading shopping-chain from western Europe provided free lunch at the same square. The offer attracted about 15,000 Croatians.
During the celebration show the Croatian chief negotiator with the EU, Vladimir Drobnjak, was talking to a reporter about the benefits of the EU membership. He mentioned the well-worn phrase about "sitting at the same table and participating in decision-making". He mentioned that all these decisions are made by consensus – exactly as was the practice in Yugoslavia – and that it is priceless. Then, to the surprise of the reporter, he added, "and for everything else, there's MasterCard". In this he revealed the truth about Croatia's accession to the EU: there is no such thing as a free lunch. Croatian citizens have already paid dearly for EU membership. True, they are becoming European citizens, but the enormous debt will greatly weaken the country's negotiating position.
Croatian membership in the EU will have significant consequences for the rest of the Balkans as well. The new EU border, now pushed towards Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, will influence regional economic, social and political dynamics. Instead of recovering lost ties and creating an atmosphere of stability and mutual co-operation among post-Yugoslav states, which the EU and Croatian government state as being among their goals, the EU's longest external land border (1,300km) will, by the mere functioning of its police apparatus, necessarily cut Croatia off from its immediate and natural surrounding and bring further isolation from its neighbours. Croatia has thus a moral and political imperative to fight against the thickening of a border that cuts deep through what was once a common borderless space.
The leader of the Greek opposition, Alexis Tsipras, during his talk at the Subversive film festival in Zagreb in May, called upon Croatia to join the struggle for an EU that will be different from the one dominated in its current policies by neoliberal ideology and austerity measures, and based instead on the principles of democratic participation, social justice and international solidarity. A Croatia that could make a difference for itself and for others is indeed one that would have to understand that to make its voice heard within the EU it would have to replace the one-way street communication with Brussels with large solidarity networks both within the EU and the rest of the Balkans. Only then might it become something more than just the EU's "small country for a big holiday".
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