engleski

Croatia: Towards the Concept of Euroregions

Croatia, a new state of South-eastern Europe is confronted with important dilemmas of future development, especially of the regional organisation and development. Like Slovenia, after international recognition (1992), admission to OUN and membership of CEI (Central European Initiative, 1992), OESC (Organisation of European Security and Cooperation), The Council of Europe (1996), Partnership for Peace (NATO 2001), Croatia joined the rank of countries associated with EU in the status of wait-and-see (2001), WTO in 2002, CEFTA (Central European Free Trade Agreement) in 2003. Nowadays the country has entered the stage of formalizing its relations with European Union, expecting that Croatian admission will be treated individually, without connection with the problems of neighbouring countries. So Croatia, after 12 countries joined the European community, has to meet conditions for entering EU. Taking everything in consideration, satisfying all conditions for possible admission can hardly be expected before 2008-2010. Naturally, Croatian regions are playing a significant role in the application of the general concept of European region development and organisation. Within the framework binding the regions into homogeneous communities of interest, the dominant question is how to organize the state space according to the Euroregion concept. Is Croatia a European region? Does Croatia as a whole belong to a bigger Euroregion? Are a few traditional Croatian regions self-standing Euroregions? Is the contemporaneous administrative regional organisation of the country (counties) the base of an optimal reorganisation towards Euroregion concept? Do one or few Croatian regions build some transborder regions with regions of neighbouring countries? What are the main and acceptable principles of regionalisation inside the state borders? These are the questions the author discusses in the paper, trying to stress some frame solutions and canalise prominent and decisive parameters.

Croatia, European Union, Euroregion, regionalization, Croatian regions

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