In Croatia, European issues are trumped by domestic preoccupations

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For the needs of this text, we sought clues on the EU programmes by reaching out to the primary political events. Specifically: the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ, which gained 40% of the seats within the parliamentary elections); the Social Democrats (SDP, 28%); the Homeland Motion (DP, rightwing populist, 9%); The Bridge (Most, conservative, 7%); We Can! (Možemo, eco-socialist, the Croatian equal of Spain’s Podemos, 6%).

Though we had been promised solutions in phone conversations, solely the SDP and Možemo responded with them earlier than publication.

Allow us to take first the political proper, which in Croatia consists of the HDZ (a part of the European Folks’s Celebration), the DP and Most (which, if it enters parliament, will in all probability sit with the Identification and Democracy group). On the prevailing proof, we’ve an honest concept of the foremost precedence of those events within the upcoming election: “safety”.

The Croatian proper sees the migration of refugees from war-torn or environmentally and economically devastated areas of Asia and Africa primarily as a safety downside. That’s the reason it has known as for Croatia’s military and civil-defence forces to be despatched to the borders with Bosnia and Serbia. Making full use of the stereotypes surrounding “migrants”, it has sought to justify the violent strategies used lately by the Croatian police to “defend the territory”.

One undeniably real safety downside is the struggle in Ukraine and the Russian menace. The proper needs to counter this by higher arming the Western allies; bettering navy coordination between EU nations; strengthening the Croatian military and reintroducing obligatory navy service for males.

Along with safety, these three events will attempt to show to their voters that they’re the guarantors of Croatia’s hard-won nationwide sovereignty. A yr in the past the European Public Prosecutor’s Workplace (EPPO)  uncovered quite a few corrupt HDZ ministers, in addition to the inefficiency of Croatia’s judiciary and its subservience to authorities. The EPPO has thus naturally discovered itself within the crosshairs of the precise on the difficulty of “sovereignty safety”.

The dispute got here to a head in March with a heated public change between Prime Minister Andrej Plenković (HDZ) and the EU’s chief public prosecutor Laura Kövesi over the very difficulty of the EPPO’s jurisdiction. Croatia’s newly elected chief prosecutor Ivan Turudić (whose appointment had been criticised as political interference within the judiciary) has mentioned that the EPPO’s jurisdiction ought to be utterly abolished.

For its half the SDP informed us that it’s going to focus its marketing campaign on three themes: financial equality, safety and equality. It says its imaginative and prescient of Europe is one in all social justice; solidarity between EU nations; higher healthcare, social safety and training; lowered youth employment; and transparency and accountability in politics.