EU AFFAIRS
What Croatia’s E EU Membership Means for Europe by Judy Dempsey*
On July 1, Croatia became the 28th member of the European Union. For the first time, a country that was deeply embroiled in the Balkan Wars of the 1990s takes a seat in Brussels.
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ver since accession negotiations began in 2003, successive Croatian governments, despite wavering support from their domestic public, were determined to complete the talks quickly. For politicians in Zagreb, joining the EU was about drawing a line under the wretched and bloody past of recent civil war. It was also about proving to the EU, as well as to Croatia’s western Balkan neighbors, that the country was not condemned to crouch outside the EU’s door. Croatia’s accession has immense strategic implications for the EU. The most important question is what will happen to the enlargement policy, one of the bedrocks of the EU, after Croatia’s entry. There is an unofficial consensus that enlargement will come to a full stop for several years. This is not good