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Croatia on the path towards the EU: conditionality and challenge of negotiations

As a first candidate for the EU membership and a forerunner from the SAP region for the EU integration, Croatia should demonstrate its ability to fulfil the remaining criteria for starting the negotiations. However, the assessment of Croatia’ s readiness to integrate into the EU will depend to greatest extent on success of internal reforms, ability and quality of implementation, but the external framework might significantly help the country to pass this exam more successfully. The factor of political readiness of the EU to integrate additional new members should not be neglected. The fifth, eastern enlargement did not produce major negative effect which is a good signal for the continuation of the process. The dynamism and new views of the ten new member states enriched the Union, but the old “ mental map” still exists. On the other hand, it seems that with the signing of the Accession Treaty with Bulgaria and Romania the integration fatigue was overcome to a certain extent. Therefore Croatia needs to use the best of institutional memory of the new member states and combine it with its own potentials in order to speed up the process and achieve the internal readiness for the integration.

European Uion; Croatia; EU integration; conditionality; accession negotiations

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