The politics of differentiated integration : what do governments want? country report - Croatia

Abstract

This paper presents empirically substantiated answers on the salience of differentiated integration from the perspectives of Croatian governments between 2004 and 2020. Judging from our analysis, differentiated integration has been – and remains – a low salience issue for Croatian governments. The few times that DI salience peaked were in 2003-07 (the beginning of the EU accession negotiations), 2009-12 (the period leading to the conclusion of the accession negotiations), and finally a more prominent peak during 2015-16, prompted by the 2015 EU refugee crisis. This has allowed identification of the principal drivers of DI on the demand and supply sides. We find that in the Croatian case the peak-salience moments are largely driven by the broad mechanisms (e.g. either enhanced cooperation or opt-outs) and instances of DI (e.g. Rome III, Pesco), together with specific instances of DI that gained particular traction in Croatian political discourse (e.g. the opt-out from the Global Compact on Refugees and the ‘Marrakesh agreement’). For the most part, political reflection on DI has taken place in the Croatian parliament (cro. Hrvatski Sabor), while salience has been overall low in Prime Ministers’ (PM) speeches (annual parliamentary addresses, European Council reports) and government programmes. Lastly, over the same period, the position of Croatian governments on differentiated integration has largely been informed by a very broad and non-specific support for Croatia’s EU membership and advancing the integration process across policy areas.