Croatia Joins the EU

Image via Hurriyet

At a time when Greece seems on the way out of the European Union, Croatia has just secured its way in. On Sunday, January 22nd, the Croatian public voted overwhelmingly in a national referendum in favor of joining the European Union, with 67% voting yes despite a low turnout. This referendum comes one month after Croatians voted in a new centre-left pro-EU party for the first time in decades.

Croatia’s application to the EU, submitted in 2003 with negotiations started in 2005 alongside Turkey, has not been without its difficulties. Croatia first had to resolve border disputes with EU-member Slovenia and fulfill satisfactorily 35 chapters of the acquis communitaire which outline the political and economic criteria of joining the EU.

Yet, for many Croatians, these were simple obstacles to overcome compared to the transition from a communist to a free-market economy and their bloody involvement in the Yugoslav Wars of the early 1990s. Croatian nationalists have always maintained a westward orientation through strong ties with the Roman Catholic church, latin script, and the access its Adriatic coast has given it to Western Europe.

Despite a brief surge in euroskepticism following the sentencing of a former Croatian general for war crimes at The Hague in 2011, Croatian political and public opinion has always been strongly in favor of EU integration.

Croatia must now wait for the remaining 27 EU member states to approve its entry into the EU, with July 1, 2013 as the expected date of entry. The influx of foreign funds and investment as a result of accession to the EU is expected to help rebuild Croatia’s still ravaged tourism, agriculture, and industrial sectors.

Croatia’s GDP per capita, at 56% of the EU average as of 2010, is also expected to increase with greater mobility of goods and labor. Many Croatians are optimistic that entry into the EU will bring more transparency into their notoriously inefficient and corrupt government bureaucracy.

With the EU and the eurozone’s recent economic and debt problems, some Croatians are more pessimistic. Croatia is now far more exposed to Europe’s problems of debt, immigration, and a recessionary economy.

As Europeans look to Croatia for an assessment of Europe, Croatia does not see the referendum as an appraisal of the current state of the EU but a deliberate turn away from its Yugoslavian past and toward a rosier, more peaceful future.

The Russian Electoral Ballet

It is difficult to imagine what circumstances would compel thousands of protesters in Novosibirsk, Russia’s third-largest city, to rally outdoors while enduring minus 20C temperature for over two hours. Despite the harsh winter climate, protesters from all around Russia took to the streets of cities from Moscow to Khabarovsk to protest the results of parliamentary elections to the Duma that took place on December 4th.

Prime Minister, former President, and Presidential candidate Vladimir Putin’s party, United Russia, was expected to lose its parliamentary majority. Instead, United Russia managed to just barely hang onto a majority in the parliament with 238 MPs and 49.3% of the vote. These results are tainted by widespread allegations of ballot stuffing, vote purchasing, and forged electoral counts. Several liberal opposition parties also failed to clear the 7% vote threshold necessary to enter parliament.

The day after elections, December 5th, protesters in Moscow marched to the Lubyanka, the former headquarters of the KGB and current headquarters of the Federal Security Service, to protest perceived electoral fraud and vote tampering. Protests ramped up throughout the country culminating in large opposition rallies with over fifty-thousand attendees on December 10th and December 24th.

Outgoing President Dmitri Medvedev (who is seen as a subordinate to Putin) responded by offering token proposals to loosen election laws such as a return to the direct election of governors and mayors of Moscow and St. Petersburg (elections which were originally rescinded by Putin). Putin, on the other hand, first mocked the protesters, then claimed the protests to be indicative of a healthy democracy under United Russia. So far Putin has sacked Vladislav Surkov (believed to have been the architect of Putin’s “managed democracy”) but has refused to abandon his bid for President. Meanwhile, protesters demand a redo of Duma elections (which Putin has outright rejected) and the freeing of political prisoners.

Symbolising the otherwise divided opposition bloc, political activist and rising personality Alexei Navalny has used his blog and social networks to expose corruption, but has decided not to oppose Putin as a presidential candidate. In his place on the ticket are several opposition candidates who barely stand a chance of beating Putin. The most highly-polled candidate against Putin is the Communist Party candidate at 11%. United Russia has also been caught forging signatures in order to place a Putin ally on the ballot as an insurance candidate should all the opposition candidates withdraw in protest. The most outspoken opposition candidate is metals tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov who favors a gradual moderate “evolution, not revolution” for Russia’s problematic problematic managed democracy.

Russians are dissatisfied with widespread corruption and the absence of rule of law. Unfortunately, the opposition is not unified enough to challenge United Russia. So Russia, unlike Mubarak’s Egypt or even Gorbachev’s USSR, is not a dictatorship but not quite a full-fledged democracy. Unless Russians shed the illusion of democracy and their political apathy, the planned rally on February 4th will likely not avert Putin’s coronation following the March 4th elections.