Croatia and the EU, what does the membership bring

On the 3rd of October 2008 the Centre for European Studies with the support of the Croatian Statehood Foundation, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and VERN University organised a conference titled “Croatia and the EU, what does the membership bring”.

The conference was organized on the third anniversary of Croatia’s membership negotiations opening.

The opening speeches were given by Ambassador François Saint-Paul of France, presiding State of the EU and Gordan Jandroković, Foreign Minister of Croatia, as representative of the Prime Minister.

In his introductory statement, Srećko Prusina director of the Statehood foundation underlined the importance of communicating all aspects of the accession process in a proper way to all segments of Croatian society. He added that in many ways the EU is a unique association – membership is voluntary, yet no state regretted joining it.

Minister Jandroković described his recollections of the dramatic night 3rd to 4th of October 2005 in Luxemburg when negotiations with Croatia were officially opened. He briefly presented the expectations of the Government regarding accession, time frame and dynamics of negotiations, emphasizing the immanent optimism within Banski Dvori.

On behalf of the European Commission, Jan Truszczynski, deputy Director General of the DG on Enlargement highlighted that benefits of the accession are noticeable even before actual membership. He also stressed that reforms aiming at overall improvement of one society are the primary goal and emphasized that quality of negotiations is not to be subjected to politically predefined time-lines.

After the introductory remarks, the floor took the panel consisting of mr. sc. Martina Dalić, member of the Croatia’s negotiations team, dr. sc. Davor Božinović, State Secretary for European Integrations and former Ambassador in Serbia, H. E. Vladimir Drobnjak, head of Negotiations, dr. Péter Imre Györkös, Hungarian Ambassador, H. E. Karel Kühnl, Czech Ambassador, Doris Pack, MEP and chairwoman of the DSEE, and Klaus-Peter Willsch, German MP and president of German-Croatian Parliamentary Group. Mr. Drobnjak gave an overview of the current status of negotiations, stating that major efforts had been undertaken and that true evaluation is to come in this year’s EC report. He highlighted that the EU accession is the absolute top priority of the entire Croatian politics.

MEP Doris Pack underlined that success of the negotiation process is solely depending on Croatian political elites, equally government and opposition. Ms. Pack expressed disbelief in concept of predetermined accession dates and stressed the overall importance of criteria fulfilling. Mr. Božinović reflected on the importance of raising awareness of Croatian citizens about benefits of the EU membership. He explained that “Six would never become 27, and, hopefully, 28 soon enough, if EU membership doesn’t have clear benefits”.

Ms. Dalić presented clear statistic references to economical prosperity of those countries that joined EU, emphasizing that economic growth was followed by decreasing inflation, reduction of unemployment and rise of living standard.