Our EU membership is like coming back home

Our EU membership is like coming back home

 

Cro­ats believe that with the acces­sion to the Union, laws and rules will be respect­ed by every­body. If you are aspir­ing to a club, you need to be frank with oth­er mem­bers. It is of vital inter­est to us to see our neigh­bours join the EU aft­er they have ful­filled the require­ments.

Close-up:

H.E. Ms. Dan­i­jela Baris­ic has been Ambas­sa­dor of Cro­a­tia to Bul­gar­ia since 2009. She grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Split and has a degree in Inter­na­tion­al Rela­tions from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Zagreb. In the mid-1990s, she joined the Cro­a­tian pres­i­dent's staff and from 2001 to 2008 was spokes­per­son for the Pres­i­dent. Ms. Baris­ic has been a report­er with Radio Split for a short peri­od. She is a mem­ber of the Cro­a­tian Pub­lic Rela­tions Asso­ci­a­tion. Ms. Baris­ic is flu­ent in Eng­lish, Bul­gar­i­an and Ital­ian.

- Your Excel­len­cy, Cro­a­tia suc­cess­ful­ly closed EU nego­ti­a­tions and signed the acces­sion trea­ty at the end of 2011 fol­low­ing rath­er lengthy talks. What major chal­len­ges were you faced with in the nego­ti­a­tion proc­ess?

- Indeed, talks start­ed in Octo­ber 2005 and closed in June 2011, i.e. they con­tin­ued for more than five and a half years. Chap­ter 23: Judi­ci­ary and fun­da­men­tal rights, as well as Chap­ter 8: Com­pe­ti­tion pol­i­cy proved the most demand­ing. Dif­fi­cul­ties con­nect­ed to the lat­ter stemmed from the fact that we had sev­er­al ship­yards, which used to receive mas­sive state aid and this did not com­ply with Euro­pe­an rules and prac­ti­ces. And it turned out a social rath­er than eco­nom­ic prob­lem as they employed large num­bers of peo­ple. They had to be either reor­gan­ized to be able to work prop­er­ly with­out state aid or wound down. Judi­ci­ary chap­ter was a prob­lem, like every­where in the region, as rules had to be over­hauled root and branch. Cro­a­tia, like Bul­gar­ia, head­ed for the EU from a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent sys­tem - Social­ism - and it took us sev­er­al years to turn it into democ­ra­cy and mar­ket econ­o­my com­bined with respect for human rights. Addi­tion­al­ly, we have lived through a war, which stalled us even more. We had to deal with all these issues but I think at the end of the day we have been suc­cess­ful.

- You did it at the time when the EU sank into a severe cri­sis trig­gered by debt prob­lems in the Euro­zone. How did the Cro­a­tian author­i­ties man­age to sway the coun­try's cit­i­zens to sup­port EU mem­ber­ship in the ref­er­en­dum in Jan­u­ary?

- The gov­ern­ment did not actu­al­ly have to talk Cro­ats into cast­ing a pos­i­tive vote in the poll. We have always felt a part of Europe and EU mem­ber­ship for us is like com­ing home. We must note that EU acces­sion has been a pri­or­i­ty for all our gov­ern­ments since the coun­try declared its inde­pend­ence in 1992. We are so close­ly tied togeth­er with Europe, both eco­nom­i­cal­ly and his­tor­i­cal­ly, that we have always felt we belong with it. And then, sur­veys ahead of the Jan­u­ary ref­er­en­dum were tell­ing. Asked why they want to be part of the EU, most Cro­ats respond­ed that with the acces­sion to the Union, laws and rules will be respect­ed by every­body and qual­i­ty of edu­ca­tion, as well as envi­ron­ment pro­tec­tion, will be improved. Eco­nom­ic rea­sons were rat­ed fourth. Peo­ple believe that as we become part of the Euro­pe­an fam­i­ly, rules will be the same for every­body and those who work will prof­it.

- What moves is Cro­a­tia going to make to ensure its EU mem­ber­ship as of 1 July 2013? First, it has to go through a lengthy rat­i­fi­ca­tion proc­ess and mon­i­tor­ing, which is not sure to go smooth­ly.

- We have to go through the well known annu­al and inter­im progress reports. We, how­e­ver, are can­did with our part­ners and dis­close every­thing to them. If you are aspir­ing to a club, you need to be frank with oth­er mem­bers. This is no prob­lem for us at all. When we launched the acces­sion nego­ti­a­tion proc­ess, we said that we were not doing all the real­ly pain­ful reforms for Brus­sels but rath­er for our own sake. Sim­ply because we want our cit­i­zens to live well. And this is exact­ly why we are try­ing to show to our part­ners what we have achieved with­out embroid­er­ing the truth. We have under­tak­en com­mit­ments, and here come the results. I do not think we will have any prob­lems with the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the trea­ty by the oth­er 27 Mem­ber States. (Bul­gar­ia rat­i­fied Cro­a­ti­a'a acces­sion trea­ty on 17 Feb­ru­a­ry, first among all Mem­ber States. The inter­view was tak­en few days ear­li­er - edi­tor's note). We have come, as I have said, a long way of stren­u­ous nego­ti­a­tions, which, at the end of the day, proved ben­e­fi­cial.

- Still, could Cro­a­tia have joined the EU ear­li­er, for instance, in 2004 or 2007, con­cur­rent­ly with oth­er coun­tries of the former Sovi­et bloc?

- We have a prov­erb that says it is easy to be a gen­er­al aft­er the end of a war. I guess you have yours with a sim­i­lar mean­ing. His­to­ry can­not be changed. In the aft­er­math of what has hap­pened over the past twen­ty years or so, we will become a full EU Mem­ber in 2013. It is use­less to look back and ask if we could have or couldn't have. We start­ed the nego­ti­a­tions in 2005 when Bul­gar­ia, for instance, closed them. More­over, the EU had its dif­fi­cul­ties in draw­ing up and rat­i­fy­ing the Lis­bon Trea­ty. In oth­er words, we were out of luck. But on the oth­er hand, when you have strug­gled to achieve some­thing, you are going to have an eas­ier time lat­er.

- What chan­ges do you, per­son­al­ly, expect in Cro­a­tia aft­er it joins the EU?

- It is essen­tial for peo­ple to learn to respect laws, just as they do in the so called "old" Mem­ber States of the EU. The sys­tem is the same for every­body and rules must not be bent. There were peo­ple in Cro­a­tia who thought they could bend rules believ­ing it would give them a bet­ter chance. When, how­e­ver, there is a stur­dy sys­tem and explicit rules, things change. Fur­ther­more, EU acces­sion should have a pos­i­tive impact on econ­o­my, too, as mem­ber­ship sets clear goals and dead­lines for their achieve­ment. We still need to brace our­selves and pull through the hard times, so that it will be eas­ier for us lat­er.

- Are, though, Cro­ats will­ing to tight­en their belts for the sake of pros­per­i­ty in the future?

- Yes, they are, pro­vid­ed they have a plain sched­ule and clear goals. We can live with hav­ing a hard time so that we live a bet­ter life in a few years. What is impor­tant is to have a strat­e­gy how to attain the set objec­tives.

- Even under Fran­jo Tudjman, Cro­a­tia was accused of exten­sive high-lev­el gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion. Former prime min­is­ter Ivo Sanad­er is on tri­al. How are these prob­lems dealt with?

- It is easy. We have decid­ed that nobody is immune and we are all equal before the law. Laws are writ­ten for each of us and we have to respect them. There has been strong polit­i­cal will to deal with these prob­lems and I believe we are doing quite well. There, a former prime min­is­ter has been detained. Now he has been released on bail and his tri­al is pend­ing. A former dep­u­ty prime min­is­ter (Dam­ir Polan­cec - edi­tor's note) has already been con­vict­ed. For years, media in Cro­a­tia con­stant­ly wrote about some cor­rup­tion cas­es but noth­ing came out of it. Then, 3-4 years ago, there was final­ly the polit­i­cal will to fight this prob­lem. And thus, planned judi­ci­ary reforms turned into real­i­ty and this has been noticed by our Euro­pe­an part­ners. Now, there is no way back. Peo­ple have seen that those who do not abide by the law but design and devel­op cor­rup­tion schemes are tak­en to court, so they start­ed to believe the change has come.

- Have you set­tled the dis­putes, main­ly on the bor­der, with Slo­ve­nia, which were a sub­stan­tial stum­bling block dur­ing the acces­sion talks?

- Yes, the dis­putes have been set­tled. We have signed an agree­ment, under which we referred the issue to a court of arbi­tra­tion, which will set the bor­der. The dis­pute was brought back from the polit­i­cal stage to where it belongs - the legal one. What­ev­er the court decides, we will accept.

- Have the wounds of the war in the 1990s healed?

- When you enter Cro­a­tia, you will see no signs of the war. Build­ings and roads have been com­plete­ly recon­struct­ed, but peo­ple affect­ed by the war will car­ry scars on their hearts till the end of their lives. Nev­er­the­less, we decid­ed to put the war behind as life goes on and we must main­tain nor­mal rela­tions with all our neigh­bours. Hard as it is, we are cop­ing because one can­not live in his­to­ry. One must live in the future. Law­suits against war crim­i­nals regard­less of their ori­gin and the fact that those who have done evil have been brought to pun­ish­ment sig­nif­i­cant­ly helped us make this step. We have rebuilt the hous­es dam­aged in the war irre­spec­tive of whom they belonged to, hop­ing their own­ers will return to their birth­pla­ces. The proc­ess is slow, as due to the eco­nom­ic down­turn, there are not enough jobs right now, but we believe that things will change in the future.

- In this regard, how is Cro­a­tia going to solve its eco­nom­ic issues? It is a fact the coun­try is cur­rent­ly strug­gling.

- We have tak­en a num­ber of unpop­u­lar, yet urgent meas­ures. For exam­ple, we have raised VAT to 25% from 23%. We have made a start but we have yet to extend and car­ry through reforms in admin­is­tra­tion, to reduce the num­ber of clerks, trans­fer­ring peo­ple to indus­try and retail, to slash the gov­ern­ment budg­et def­i­cit. We are also fac­ing chal­leng­ing nego­ti­a­tions with the unions over curb­ing some social ben­e­fits such as the right to some com­pen­sa­tions and a 13th month sal­a­ry among oth­ers.

- What is hap­pen­ing in the area of priv­a­ti­za­tion?

- We have made a cru­cial mis­take, car­ry­ing out priv­a­ti­za­tion amidst war and it most­ly fail­ed to be done in a trans­par­ent way. And this is exact­ly why a few years ago when we were chang­ing the con­sti­tu­tion, we decid­ed that there will be no time-lim­it in cas­es relat­ed to war­time prof­it­eer­ing. So, any priv­a­ti­za­tion deal that there is a sus­pi­cion of being improp­er or ille­gal will be reviewed. We have many cas­es when dur­ing the war, the new own­ers fired all work­ers and sold the sites.

- How will Cro­a­tia, aft­er it joins the EU, work with the oth­er former Yugo­slav coun­tries, which are still can­di­dates?

- The issues we still have are bilat­er­al but we are mak­ing every effort to over­come them. It is of vital inter­est to us to see our neigh­bours join the EU aft­er they have ful­filled the require­ments. A year ago, we even gave them all doc­u­ments nec­es­sa­ry for EU mem­ber­ship in Cro­a­tian so that they do not have to trans­late them again. We will work with our neigh­bours under some region­al pro­grammes as in pol­i­tics, like in real life, it is good to have a neigh­bour in good health and with­out prob­lems. Look­ing at Europe's map, we see an area in the mid­dle of the EU, still not a mem­ber of the Union. It will be good to have this area join the Union. And this will be ter­ri­to­ri­al con­sol­i­da­tion rath­er than enlarge­ment. The West­ern Bal­kans can­not remain some grey spot on Europe's map.

- How, in par­tic­u­lar, is Cro­a­tia going to work with Bos­nia and Herze­gov­i­na, which is the big­gest pres­sure point in the region?

- Bos­nia must resolve its prob­lems on its own and we are ready to offer help in any­thing they need, as Cro­ats there are a con­sti­tu­tive pop­u­la­tion. We are will­ing to help Bos­nia and Herze­gov­i­na not as a teach­er who is offer­ing gui­dance, but as a part­ner who is offer­ing a hand togeth­er with oth­er EU Mem­ber States and the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

- How has Bul­gar­ia helped Cro­a­tia on its way to EU mem­ber­ship?

- You have helped us by being can­did with us. You point­ed the mis­takes you had made and thus pro­tect­ed us from mak­ing the same mis­takes. It is eas­ier to talk to some­body who has been through the same prob­lems as you.

- Cro­a­tia has one of the most strik­ing sea­side are­as in Europe. How has Cro­a­tian tour­ism devel­oped aft­er the war?

- We have tak­en great care not to over­build the sea­side with hotels and hous­es in order to keep and pre­serve indeed this Adri­at­ic pearl. Mean­while, we have built good infra­struc­ture - high­ways from the Ser­bi­an, Hun­ga­ri­an and Slo­ve­ni­an bor­der to the sea­side. We have also tried to make it eas­ier for tour­ists from remote des­ti­na­tions such as Japan and the US to reach our coun­try, aft­er all, reach­ing Cro­a­tia from Europe by car is sim­ple. As a result, despite the eco­nom­ic cri­sis 2011 saw an increase of 10% in the num­ber of tour­ists to some 9 mil­lion against 2010. And this is a huge num­ber, tak­ing into account the fact that Cro­a­tia has a pop­u­la­tion of 4.5 mil­lion. We have yet to esti­mate the prof­it. We are also try­ing to devel­op the inte­ri­or as a tour­ist des­ti­na­tion. We do not have good ski resorts but what we do have are 8 nation­al parks and many pla­ces suit­a­ble for rural and envi­ron­men­tal tour­ism.

http://www.europost.bg/article?id=3945