Euro-skepticism on the Rise

Croatia’s electorate cools toward Europe as EU capitals debate whether to open membership talks with the country. by Zeljka Vujcic 28 September 2005 ZAGREB, Croatia | Since Croatia became a candidate for EU membership in June 2004, it has seen more than its fair share of ups and downs on the issue of European integration. But in March 2005 its latest down proved very low, with Croatia being bluntly told that it would not be able to enter the EU without dramatic improvements in its handling of the war crimes issue.

As EU foreign ministers prepare to meet to discuss whether to start membership negotiations with the two candidates Croatia and Turkey, the question now is whether Croatia has done enough to bounce back. A decision is to be announced on 3 October.

However, the key individuals in determining whether the EU should start talks with the Balkan country are not among the EU’s 25 foreign ministers: rather, they are Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague (ICTY), and fugitive general Ante Gotovina of Croatia, one of the court’s three most wanted men. (The other two are Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic.)

THE FUGITIVE

Before she reports to the EU’s task force for Croatia, Del Ponte is to visit Zagreb on 30 September to assess the situation. Gotovina has been indicted for his command responsibility in the last offensive of the 1991-95 war, when the Croatian army took control of territories held by rebel Serbs.

He is considered a hero by many Croats for his role in the operation.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said he was a “moderate optimist” about Croatia’s prospects as he continued his strenuous effort to convince his EU interlocutors that his government was fully cooperating with the ICTY. On 27 September, he traveled to Strasbourg for talks with officials of the European Parliament and the Council of Europe.

Sanader appeared to have secured some support from Josep Borrell, the president of the European Parliament. “Croatia has made big steps forward and I hope that will be recognized. There will be a lot of discussion about that these days. I personally support Croatia and hope for a good outcome,” Borrell said on 27 September.

While in Strasbourg, Sanader also talked with members of the conservative European People’s Party (EPP), the largest bloc in the parliament, which had already in March opposed the EU’s decision to suspend the beginning of negotiations until Croatia could prove it was fully cooperating.

But other MEPs warned Zagreb that it must take its obligations seriously. Bronislaw Geremek, a former Polish foreign minister and member of the liberal faction in the European Parliament, argued that it is in Croatia’s own interest to fulfil as soon as possible the EU conditions for the opening of membership negotiations because the mood inside the EU toward enlargement is changing. “I hope Croatia will join the union in the next phase of enlargement, together with or shortly after Bulgaria and Romania,” Geremek said on 27 September.

Critics at home have attacked Sanader over his failure to secure Croatia’s entry for 2007, the year Bulgaria and Romania are expected to join the EU. It is now widely assumed that Croatia will not be a member before the decade is over.

Even that appears uncertain after France and the Netherlands rejected the draft EU constitution, a move many observers attributed at least in part to enlargement fatigue after the EU took in ten new member states in May 2004. The situation within the EU was certainly less complex before 17 March, the first date for the start of Croatia’s membership talks.

Back then, a majority of EU member-states agreed with Del Ponte that Croatia had shown insufficient political will to find and arrest General Gotovina. Britain in particular, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, adopted a tough stance in defining cooperation as nothing short of the arrest and extradition of Gotovina to The Hague.

There was no understanding for claims by the Croatian government that Gotovina was no longer in the country. In the words of President Stjepan Mesic, “we cannot arrest him if he is in Paraguay.”

Croatia suffered another blow earlier this month, when the United States said that were also shattered when Washington said it was unlikely that Croatia, along with Albania and Macedonia, would enter NATO before 2008. Zagreb had entertained hopes of joining in 2006.

A QUID PRO QUO?

But despite his difficult situation, Sanader has a few arguments on his side as he is facing the EU task force.

At the end of August a controversial tycoon, Hrvoje Petrac, whom the government accuses of being a key Gotovina supporter, was arrested in northwestern Greece.

Petrac was on an Interpol warrant after being sentenced to six years in prison for his involvement in a kidnapping case.

Dealing with Petrac was one of the main points in the government’s action plan to track down Gotovina and crack his support network.

At an informal meeting on 1 September in Newport, Wales, EU foreign ministers duly stated that Petrac's arrest was a positive step in the implementation of the action plan, though British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw insisted that everything depended on solving the Gotovina issue.

Also in September, Sanader received help from the prime ministers of eight EU countries, all members of parties that belong to the EPP faction, to which his conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) also belongs.

“We firmly believe the negotiations with Croatia must be opened. These negotiations will provide the best support for the ongoing reforms and the strengthening of democracy, stability and prosperity in Croatia, and the entire western Balkan region,” the leaders of Austria, Slovenia, Italy, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, and Slovakia said in a letter to British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

At the time, moreover, Croatia hoped that the widely expected victory of Sanader’s conservative friend Angela Merkel in the German general election would also create a positive climate in Brussels. However, the uncertain outcome of the German poll and the protracted coalition talks in Berlin have dashed such hopes.

Nonetheless, the contours of a possible deal on Croatia are clearly visible: Britain opposes Croatia’s entry unless Gotovina is arrested, but it is a strong supporter of Turkish membership. Austria, which will take over the EU presidency on 1 January 2006, is an implacable opponent of Turkish membership and a strong advocate for Croatia. The net effect could be that both countries will on 3 October be invited to start membership talks.

But a 27 September meeting of Austrian and British officials in Brussels produced no such deal.

ENTER THE VATICAN

In this complex and delicate situation, the proverbial bombshell exploded: an apparent bomb blast hit the Bristish embassy in Zagreb on 19 September, injuring one person. It later turned out to have been caused accidentally by a hand grenade, but the bizarre circumstances of the incident – involving a local employee with a criminal record who claimed to be carrying the grenade to defend himself against attacks from Petrac’s entourage – gave little cause for relief, though it now seemed to be the British government rather than Croatia that was caught in an embarrassing lapse.

More worryingly, the London-based Daily Telegraph ran an interview with Del Ponte the following day in which she said the Vatican and the Catholic Church were involved in hiding Gotovina in one of Croatia's many Franciscan monasteries.

Sanader asked the chief prosecutor to share any information on Gotovina's hideout, again stressing that no information indicated that the fugitive was within Croatia's boundaries.

Some Franciscans replied by mocking Del Ponte, telling the media she could check under their frocks to see whether she could find anything there. The Catholic Church has never reined in bishops, like Mile Bogovic, who openly denounce the ICTY as a political court and praise Gotovina's role in the war.

Some analysts pointed out that the timing of Del Ponte's frontal attack might not have been accidental.

“It has become customary that every time before Brussels is to decide on opening talks, some new problem emerges that makes Croatia look unprepared,” says Andjelko Milardovic, director of the Political Science Research Center in Zagreb. “These last developments do not leave much hope either.”

Milardovic thinks this has more to do with the EU’s internal politics than with anything specifically to do with Croatia. “Unlike the rest of the Western Balkans, Croatia has been moving fast towards the EU,” he contends. “It seems that there are some interests within the EU advocating the model of a convoy whereby all countries enter together, despite the publicly proclaimed individual approach to the countries of the region.”

Speaking in Bern on 1 September, Del Ponte called on the EU not to offer talks to Croatia since the country, despite some improvement, had not made real progress on the war-crimes issue. She argued that the authorities would do even less once talks had begun.

Sanader rejected the accusation. “If Croatia starts EU membership talks, then our obligations will be unquestionable and it will be yet another reason for the government to fully cooperate with the Hague court, which we have already been doing,” he said.

At the same press conference Del Ponte also criticized the government over last month’s celebration of the tenth anniversary of the 1995 operation that Gotovina commanded, saying that the action’s dark sides had not received sufficient attention.

Many Croatians could accept that statement since both President Mesic and Prime Minister Sanader spoke clearly about the crimes committed by the Croatian side in the operation. In fact, their speeches in Knin, a former ethnic-Serb stronghold, were met with hissing and chants of “Ante, Ante” from the crowd.

Billboards with Gotovina’s picture continue to pop up throughout the country, many of them erected by veterans on private land along the roads in war-affected southern Dalmatia, before unsuspecting crowds of tourists.

SKEPTICISM ON THE RISE

Polls suggest the back-and-forth with the ICTY has pushed many Croats toward some degree of euro-skepticism.

But Petrac’s arrest has reinforced the government’s case that it is indeed closing in on Gotovina, should he be in the country. “Chances [to start membership talks] seem to be better now for Croatia then they were in March,” political analyst Davor Gjenero believes.

Anything short of a completely negative evaluation would probably be good enough this time around, he contends.

Says Gjenero, “It seems that Carla Del Ponte could opt for a looser assessment, avoiding to say there is full cooperation but giving a milder evaluation than the last time, which would allow the [EU] task force to interpret it as sufficient to open talks.”

Gjenero believes that Del Ponte's latest tough statements were “over-politicized” and beyond the prosecutor’s mandate, and that they may have annoyed EU decision-makers.

But the government itself does not seem to be in a hurry either to name a negotiation team or to try to convince the public that EU membership is a good thing for Croatia.

Gjenero points to the fact that opinion polls show the rise of euro-skepticism not only among voters of center-right parties, notably the conservative HDZ and the far-right Croatian Party of Rights (HSP), but also among the electorate of the main opposition Social Democratic Party (SDP) and other, more liberal parties.

A Eurobarometer survey of 1,000 people in September showed that 53 percent of those polled do not believe that EU membership will bring benefits to Croatia, four percent more than in the previous survey in March.

Only 36 percent said they believed in the benefits of EU membership.

This wave should worry the government, even if similar mood swings were recorded prior to accession in some of the EU’s new member-states. In Croatia, some of the most painful reforms needed for eventual membership have not even started in earnest.

“The process of Croatia's Europeanization leaves less room for optimism. The authorities do nothing to promote European values and prepare the public for the reforms necessary,” Gjenero says.

Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that EU membership is not just a question of the EU’s 25 members agreeing to open talks with the former Yugoslav republic, but also a question of Croatians embracing the reform needed to bring the country on the right course. The Gotovina case is an unwelcome distraction from that task.