Croatia faces ‘demanding’ membership negotiations
Barroso tells Croatian president that judicial reform is a priority.
European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said today that Croatia faced a “very demanding” journey to EU membership.
Speaking after the first official visit to Brussels by Ivo Josipović, Croatia’s president, Barroso said the country’s hopes of joining the EU in 2012 were realistic. But he said that judicial reform – one of only three policy areas on which talks have yet to start – would be particularly difficult.
In addition to reforming its judiciary and public administration, and stepping up its fight against corruption, Croatia also needs to fully co-operate with the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague before it can enter the EU, Barroso said.
Josipović was in Brussels to discuss his country’s bid to join the European Union with EU leaders. Croatia hopes to wrap up accession talks later this year and become a member in 2012.
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Josipović, a social democrat, took office on 18 February, succeeding the popular Stjepan Mesić, who had been in office since 2000. He is Croatia’s third president since it gained independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. The office of president – which was all-powerful under Franjo Tudjman, its first occupant – is today largely ceremonial, although the president carries a certain moral authority.
Josipović will work with a centre-right government under Jadranka Kosor, leader of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). All mainstream parties support Croatia’s bid to join the EU, although the public has grown considerably more sceptical in recent years. Farmers are currently protesting across the country against cheaper imports from the EU, which they say forces them out of business.
Barroso told reporters after today’s meeting with Josipović that Croatia would have needed structural reform even without the demands of the accession process, a point also made by Josipović. The new president voiced his regret that these reforms had not been undertaken earlier.
The two leaders also discussed the tense situation in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bosnian Croats – who represented just over 17% of the population at the time of the last census, in 1991, a share that has almost certainly fallen since then – hold Croatian citizenship and are allowed to vote in Croatian elections, although that might change in the near future.
Political stalemate between the Bosnian Serbs and the Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) has led to backsliding on several conditions that need to be met before the country can become an EU membership candidate. “We are concerned with some recent developments in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Barroso said, adding that he would discuss the matter with Mirko Cvetković, Serbia’s prime minister, later today.
Josipović also met Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, and Jerzy Buzek, the president of the European Parliament.