Croatian Weekly Economic Bulletin
January 30 - February 05, 2006, Edition 414

This week: Last week, the majority of media attention was taken up by the alleged EU attempt to re-create former Yugoslavia through a free-trade zone, by the scandal with police officers participating in a bar brawl, and the European Handball Championship.

The free-trade zone story actually began the week before last, with the first announcement of EC proposal for the creation of a “West Balkans” free trade zone, which would include four former Yugoslavia countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, and Serbia and Montenegro – together with Albania, already a part of the Stabilisation and Association Process. Most Croatian sources reacted vehemently to this proposal, accusing the EU of trying to re-create Yugoslavia through trade. The Government, on the other hand, while adamantly refusing to participate in any kind of “re-creation”, countered with the proposal to regulate West Balkans trade through widening of CEFTA to include other SAP countries and Moldavia. As CEFTA currently consists of just three countries – Bulgaria, Croatia, and Rumania – all three of which are preparing to become EU members – the proposal makes very good sense, using as it does already existing mechanisms. Because of this, EU representatives
announced they would consider both the EC and Croatian proposal, but this did not prevent at least part of Croatian media from commenting on the inability of the EU to percieve the region in any kind of new light.

The police scandal was also a continuation of a previous story, the one pertaining to night-club violence. In this particular case, however, it turned out that the police-force members who participated in the brawl were acting as a sort of vigilante force. The discovery pushed the Minister of the Interior to announce he would, despite investigations, not allow the media to attack his men – a statement that was not accepted with particular enthusiasm in the media and the general public. The sharper commentators used this opportunity, once again, to stress the continued existence of mentality which perceives certain people as above the law, even in official circles. Be those people members of police forces or Homeland War Veterans, commentators warned, this is the kind of attitude that creates serious obstacles on Croatia’s way towards Europe, because it justifies and even sanctifies lawlessness despite official lip-service to the rule of law paid by government officials.

Finally, the majority of the public interest focused on European Handball Championship, with Croatian representation on its way to a medal. To illustrate the importance of sports in Croatian life, it may be interesting to note that sports bet shops last year cleared a total of 3 billion Kuna. In a country where public debate rages on whether the average public spends more money on mobile phones or on health protection, this is not a sum to be sneered at.