Samenvatting

The objective of this dissertation was to research the challenges of accession that Croatia faced in order to become part of the European Union. In order to better understand why these challenges occurred during Croatia's negotiations, an overview of the Copenhagen Criteria will be provided. Furthermore, in order to further analyze how Croatia faced these challenges, an in depth analysis of what the European Union expected Croatia to do will be given.
On the basis of the research question, two research methods were used: desk research and a personal interview with a policy officer of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Desk research was used in order to find reports, and articles that would help answer the research question. An interview was initiated with a policy officer of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The interview was a useful way of finding out more information on subjects such as the renewed consensus on enlargement, what the European Union learnt from the 2007 accession and if the economic crisis had any impact on Croatia.
The research showed that Croatia faced four issues during its negotiation process for becoming the 28th member of the European Union. These fours issues were the independence war, the 2007 accession round, the new chapters of the acquis communautaire and the economic crisis. These issues all had a different effect on Croatia's negotiation process. The independence war was the issue that slowed down the negotiations the most. Border dispute between Croatia and Slovenia, and the lack of cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal of the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in finding war criminals were the main reasons why the negotiations were stopped. Furthermore, after the 2007 accession round, the European Commission decided to take new measures by introducing the renewed consensus on enlargement in 2006. The new chapters of the acquis communautaire made it more difficult for Croatia to open and close chapters due to a new negotiating methodology called benchmarking. In addition to this, some chapters in the 'old' acquis were combined while others were divided, creating new chapters. Finally the economic crisis had some impact on the implementation of reforms. These four issues will be analyzed in chapter four of this paper.
All in all, it can be said the Croatia faced many issues to become part of the European Union. In order to avoid the same situation in the next accession round, personal recommendations as well as recommendations made by the European Commission will be stated at the end of this paper.