CAFÉ EUROPE - Before Tudjman, after Tudjman N

By 2002 the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague had become critical of Croatia because of the government’s foot-dragging over extraditions of suspected war criminals. [...] Before the elections, on 22 January 1990, Racan led the Croatian delegation out of the 14th party congress of the Yugoslav communists, following the Slovenians, in protest of Milosevic’s policies. [...] The goals of our and Slovenia’s projects were the democratization of Yugoslavia, the strengthening of its confederal units and its entry into the EU. [...] And then I signed the Agreement with the EU in the name of Croatia … when I returned to the hotel and turned on the television, I saw the first hearing of Milosevic [before the ICTY] in The Hague. [...] Racan lost the 2003 elections but, in a way, had achieved the impossible: he had managed to get the EU to accept Croatia’s application for membership while avoiding a nationalist backlash.