Will Croatia's accession bubble burst first?

Jasna Plevnik *

From 2000 to January 2009 the accession to the European Union became the cornerstone of Croatia's foreign policy identity. She has never been thinking that the entering to the EU is gatecrash club , and was eager to earn a membership.

The accession process has been paved with many obstacles, and some of them were caused by slowness of Croatia to fight corruption or to reform judiciary. Croatia has openly accepted her blame. Besides, her approaching to the EU has been struck with the mounting process known as institutional paralysis.

Though Croatia never has had bling period of the accession, and was deeply hurt by the EU many times she continued to make a progress in moving towards her strategic foreign policy aim incarnating herself as an appropriate candidate for the EU membership. That success has given hope to the other countries in the Balkans.

But, in the beginning of 2009 it happened a new misery to Croatia. Slovenia, her neighbour, and the member of the EU, came with a plan to block Croatia's entering to the European Union.

Slovenia's EU power over Croatia

Slovenia's diplomacy war on Croatia is simply first and foremost preoccupied by strengthening Slovene position at eighteen years old border dispute between two countries.

The border dispute is, of course, complex, and has deep history. In resolving of it Slovenia is led by political instinct that Croatia will give up of her sea and territory borders in exchange for the membership in the EU. That diplomatic approach doing of Slovenia's Prime Minister Borut Pahor much good in the opinion polls of Slovenian citizens who support his foreign policy towards Croatia, understanding it as a regular negotiation process based on the EU rules.

Was PM Pahor right to tray to make maximum of using the EU as an instrument to block Croatia's access negotiations with the Union? The European Commission thinks opposite, but has done very little, or nothing to protect credibility of Croatia's candidate status that should mean that she is relevant ally and partner to the EU. Croatia is feeling abandoned, and her potential for fighting with those weird words - accession, approaching, or benchmarking- getting by the course of the current EU behaviour weaker.

Fragile principle power of the Union

Despite the European Commission odds with the grumbling Slovenian border diplomacy towards Croatia, it has acted mainly through empty words saying that Slovenia should not use bilateral problems to block Croatia's access negotiations with the EU. The usual platitudinous of the EC statements was the main reaction.

Croatia's PM Ivo Sanader has good relationships with Germany, Austria, Czech and Slovakia's prime ministers, but only the French PM Nicolas Sarkozy helped to post that issue.

The EC has been failed to resolve the diplomatic dispute and because of its wrong diagnostic starting point. The Union has used its power asking Croatia, and Slovenia to accept a group of international experts to help them to resolve the border problems. Croatia accepted that though she has been resolute to accept only a verdict of International court in Haag, unlike Slovenia that has lusted for politically imposed solution. The reporter of the European Parliament for Croatia Hannes Swoboda has strongly supported Croatia in presenting the border dispute as a legal issue for which there are international laws that regulate it. Swoboda has criticized Olli Rehen for supporting Slovenia's political approach to the border dispute.

The EU on those problems must turn out quite differently. The Union would commit a historic strategic blunder if to leave Slovenia free to break its principle that one country could not use bilateral problems to block other country's accession negotiations with the EU. In that question the following of the EU' s principles are even more important than the reforms that Croatia has implemented, or not.

The EU practice of principles always suffered from basic flaws: as a Cyprus case; and as the Romania and Bulgaria became the EU members though they had a deep corruption problems. Many other examples could be adduced to illustrate weakness of the EU to implement its own principles.

Will Croatia's accession bubble burst first?

Last nine years were the period in that the accession to the Union seemed to every country in the South East Europe to capture the essence of their national foreign policy goals. They believed that the EU was opening up to the Balkans.

But, all of those events that happened to Croatia have disoriented her and the Region. Besides, the aftermath of EU economic crisis has been heating up in the Region the ambitions to reassess its concept of integration to the Union.

As time passes, many sense the emergence of question like what windows the EU gives Croatia and the Region? The answer is far from clear.

But, the alienation from the EU is not so unthinkable, that problem could become real. The EU integration concept in the South Eastern Europe has lost its enormous suggestive power derived from the historical expectations that only membership in the EU can move their weak economies forward, and that it will protect them in the case of economic crisis. The hope of economic help was the main reason why the EU has been sexy to the countries of former Yugoslavia, not because of its political culture or the geopolitical power. Now, that period of the membershipism is declining, not only because of many problems in the process of accession, but because of the EU individualistic approach to the economic crisis too.

In today's difficult times when the EU economic zenith is passing, that concept of regional integration is challenged more than ever. Therefore the EU should face itself that there is the South East Europe tired of its unwillingness to change its every new year's populist concept-this year will be decisive for the Balkans-.

Will the accession bubble burst first in Croatia, and after that in other countries, and if so what is the word to describe the opposite of it?

Perhaps, the possibility of new geopolitical forms and instabilities in the Balkans. The EU seeing that scenario rather impossible counting as always on the Southeast Europe' s impotence to draw an alternative to the EU.

Arguably there is still in comparative terms, more Europe than Russia or America in the Region. Croatia clearly defines itself as pro-Western unlike Serbia and Montenegro that are pro-Russian and pro- Western. Macedonia is more Americans, and economic dying Bosnia and Herzegovina is pro European, pro Russian and Middle Eastern. These international relations have had a longer history reaching back deep into the Cold war era.

However the integration policy was the Zeitgeist of the 2000s that contributed to peace and stability in the Region. It is not hard to see that period is now passing. The EU has started to talk more and more of stalling the accession negotiation process, and less and less of the enlargement and driving forces behind it. That trend and global economic crisis can turn Croatia and the Region in the EU' s most unsuccessful story unless it let itself to be touched, as said Abraham Lincoln, by the better angels of its nature.

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* Jasna Plevnik is a Vice President of the Foreign policy Forum, South East European think tank specialized for the issues of foreign policy and processes of integration in South-East Europe. She is author of the books: The Price of the New World Order; The World's Challenges to the National Interests, Golden marketing- Tehnička knjiga, Zagreb, 2009; Geopolitics of Europe , chrestomathy, Sarajevo, Faculty of Political science of the University of Sarajevo, 2008 ; Beyond Globalisation , Golden marketing- Tehnička knjiga, Zagreb, 2003; Pas globalizimit, Prishtine, Kosovo, Kolegji Universitar, Victory, 2003