CROATIA HAS voted strongly in favour of joining the European Union in July 2013, according to early results from yesterday’s referendum.
The preliminary tally gave the Yes camp 67 per cent of votes, allaying fears in Brussels and among many Croats that the EU’s economic woes would boost the No vote by compounding widespread fears over tough, EU-stipulated reforms and potential loss of sovereignty.
“This is a big day for Croatia and 2013 will be a turning point in our history,” President Ivo Josipovic said after voting for his country of 4.3 million to become the EU’s 28th member, the second after Slovenia from the former Yugoslavia. “I look forward to the whole of Europe becoming my home.”
Croatia completed seven years of tough accession talks last year, and all major political parties joined Mr Josipovic in supporting accession.
“Croatia says Yes . . . We are not big, but we are not insignificant either,” prime minister Zoran Milanovic said during a ballot that several small right-wing and nationalist groups described as Croatians’ last chance to prevent their nation falling under the control of unelected officials in distant Brussels.
The Yes camp’s cause was helped by backing from Croatia’s influential Catholic Church, while the Euro-sceptic case was weakened when jailed war criminal Ante Gotovina, a war hero for many nationalists, surprisingly called on his compatriots to vote for EU membership.
“Croatia’s place is in the European Union,” Gotovina said in a statement broadcast on national television on the eve of the referendum. “Tomorrow in The Hague I will vote for Croatia’s entry into the EU,” said the man whose refusal to surrender to the United Nations war crimes tribunal delayed Zagreb’s EU accession talks.
He was eventually arrested in 2005 while on the run in the Canary Islands and sentenced to 24 years in jail for crimes committed during Croatia’s 1991-95 war for independence from Yugoslavia. He is being held in the international war crimes detention centre in Scheveningen, The Hague.
On Saturday in Zagreb, several people were injured and arrested in clashes between police and about 1,000 anti-EU protesters, who included many war veterans.
“An independent and sovereign Croatia is the only framework that can guarantee Croatians freedom, cultural progress and material wealth,” said Milovan Sibl, the head of one group that campaigned for a No vote.
The Euro-sceptic Party of Rights said in a statement: “The EU is politically and economically unstable. We should vote against and then have a public debate about the pros and cons and inform the citizens properly before holding another referendum.”
Supporters of EU accession argued that membership was the best way for Croatia to escape recession and shrink its €48 billion foreign debt and 17 per cent unemployment rate; it is also due to receive some €245 million in EU pre-accession assistance.
“Croatia will not lose its sovereignty or natural resources, nor will it be ruled by the EU,” Mr Josipovic insisted. “Europe will not solve all our problems, but it’s a great opportunity.”
