By Lena Unbehauen - 28th September 2006
Croatia is determined to push forward to EU entry in 2009 despite Europe’s closed door after Bulgaria and Romania’s membership in 2007.
Zagreb is to continue business as usual towards EU membership after a Brussels announcement that European expansion was limited to 27 members.
Further enlargement will require a new European constitutional treaty to allow EU institutions to function properly.
But Croatia has declared ambition to speed up with reforms to 35 policy areas, demanded by the EU since the beginning of accession talks in late 2005.
“Our ambition is to finish all chapters by the end of 2008,” said Croatian prime minister Ivo Sanader.
This target date coincides with the EU’s objective of a new constitutional treaty, which is on ice after the Dutch and French referendum rejections last year.
While welcoming Bulgaria and Romania on Tuesday, commission president José Manuel Barroso cautioned that no further EU enlargement was possible without resolution of the “whole constitutional matter”.
Despite this obstacle, Sanader still expects that Croatia’s “fast track” membership will be achieved in the next four years.
“I think that enlargement fatigue does not apply to Croatia,” he told the FT, implying that EU concerns mostly focus on another candidate, Turkey.
In economic terms the former Yugoslav country would be already strong enough to fulfil entry criteria, surpassing the economies of the newest EU entries Bulgaria and Romania.
Croatia’s membership, which strongly supported by Austria and Germany, is rather a question of whether the EU and not Zagreb meets its challenges in 2008.
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