Europe as an idea and a reality in Croatia.

This morning I decided to get breakfast across the street rather than make something for myself. The place I went to is a little bar with small grill that makes hot ham and cheese sandwiches. They have a special they call a Happy Hour (which the used to only have between 2 and 5pm, but now you can get it any time). The Happy Hour is a hot sandwich, a cup of coffee with milk, and a drink which is a do it yourself thing like cool aid, only not sweet. They charge 23 Kuna for it, which is pretty good (roughly $4). I've been there a couple of times before, but this time the owner was there. He picked up that I was an American right away because of the way I pronounced Happy Hour.

Anyway, getting to the point of all of this, at one point he said, "Our special is only 3 Euros. After we join the EU it will be 5 Euros, but right now, only 3." That's because when Croatia joins the EU it is going to have to implement a lot of taxes that they don't have at the moment. This was front page news the other day, when the headline was "5 percent tax on bread and milk the day we join the EU." Off on the side there was a little note that said cigarettes were going to cost 30 Kuna a pack too. That is going to really hurt the pro-EU vote on the referendum. And this sort of puts the soft support that EU membership has here in focus. Croats see themselves as European. It is a key part of their identity. Yet, at the same time, barely 50% support EU membership because getting in is going to be very painful economically.

The HDZ has forced this issue because they have announced that the target date for Croatia to get in is 2009. That was actually a very smart political move because national elections are due here next year. The SDP has always claimed that they were the party that really wanted EU membership. The HDZ was initially opposed to it, but have come to support it in the last few years. The SDP always claimed the HDZ wouldn't carry though with the push for entering the EU because a lot of the HDZ base really doesn't want it. Putting EU membership in 2009 also robs the SDP of any real campaign agenda. They can't put up a package of government programs they want to implement because all of the first year of the new government will be consumed with entering the EU, and if the SDP's program busts EU spending caps, then it would be the SDP derailing EU membership. And on top of it all, the SDP will have to push for their members to vote for EU membership and take the heat of the increased cost of living that is going to cause.

Ultimately, the real question is, does Croatia have to be in the EU to be considered European? That's a question they have to figure out themselves. Right now their pride is stung because Roumania and Bulgaria got in already, and they are still on the outside. Croatia has always seen itself as the most European of the Southeastern European countries, so seeing those two get in first really kind of knocked them back a little. And Croats have always been a little ticked at Slovenia, since they started the whole breakup of Yugoslavia and then slipped into the EU like they were never even in "that country with all the problems."

And the picture this time is some public art in Croatia. Its Kuna playing by the water in the entry way to a local bank (the Kuna is actually an animal, kind of a local version of a Ferret). It just kind of caught my eye one day.