Croatia and the EU: Winners and losers

The protection of consumers and market competition, as well as other legal areas, will substantially change the relations within the society and therefore the real implementation of those rules meets with the resistance of those who are to lose. They are the ones who, in the past, managed to gain the privileged access to the state funds, using the rules different from those in the EU, or disregarding the rules altogether.

Adjusting the Croatian law to the legal system of the EU is often regarded as a technical job. However, it is primarily the question of bridging the legal and cultural gap caused by the decades of Croatia’s severance from the European and world’s mainstream. It is important to bear in mind that the European law, in principle, developed as a reaction to the existing social conflicts, while the legal systems in the transitional countries are being adjusted to those developed legal norms and are anticipating a reality that yet has to evolve. The statement of Olgica Spevec, the president of the Council of the Agency for the protection of market competition, is a proof of all this said above. She said the Agency was not able to work due to the lack of financial and human resources as well as the lack of public support and the support of the market players (Vjesnik, 22 February 2004).

In a situation in which there are no interested parties which will protect their own legal interests through the regular legal channels and which will insist on the implementation of the anti-monopoly decisions, it is not realistic to expect the Agency to fulfil its function.

The protection of consumers, human rights, equality of men and women, market competitiveness, as well as other areas of the legal system are regulated by rules and regulations that substantially change the relations within a society and re-distribute social power. Therefore, it is to be expected that their real implementation would meet with the resistance of those who, affected by those rules and regulations, were to lose their acquired positions and that their resistance would be directed at rendering impossible the implementation of those rules and regulations. Hence the EU’s demand that the European legal regulations be implemented actually and not only formally.

So, who are the winners and who are the losers in this harmonization process? As a rule it is those who managed to acquire the privileged access to the state funds, using regulations different from those in the European Union, or in a totally arbitrary way, without any regulations at all, as well as those whose social status is based on petrified power relations.

Traditional beneficiaries of subsidies continued to deal in political loyalties even in the multi-party environment. Farmers, ship-builders, metal workers and even workers in the tourist industry are the examples of those who continue to draw political income in a form of subsidies, financial rehabilitations, restructuring and similar innovative forms of snatching out at the tax-payers money. This kind of behaviour is helped a lot by the lack of consciousness that the state subsidies, in any shape or form, are nothing but a form of direct redistribution of public wealth and power. Apart from the state subsidies, there are other examples of this client-like behaviour that can be found in other areas, like public purchasing, and even in the cases where there is an EU harmonised legal system in existence, its application is doubtful because of the absence of the interested parties prepared to start legal proceedings, because of the absence of the independent and efficient judiciary and because of the public susceptibility.

Among the losers in the process of implementation of the European laws will be also those who gained their social status thanks to the social power accumulated over a long period of time. Strengthening of the status of consumers, women, minorities and small enterprises, all those traditional losers in this political rent-seeking, will be the main feature of Croatia’s rapprochement with the EU. This will, consequently, contribute to the breaking off of the traditional political alliances forged during time. The introduction of the European rules of the game into the distribution of state subsidies or into the public purchasing will reduce the interest of traditional winners in poli tical sponsorship and lead to weakening of the local political support. The inclusion of women into the political process will result in different political priorities to which the politicians will have to give different answers. In current faze of Croatia’s integration into Europe the emphasis is mainly on fulfilling political criteria. Not without reason. Pluralist democracy and the protection of basic rights, the independent judiciary and, last but not least, the protection of private property, are guarantees and necessary conditions for economic and political reconstruction of Croatia. Therefore it would be superficial and careless to see the process of harmonisation of the Croatian legal system with that of the EU as a formal act of comparison and an exercise in attuning the two.

The author is professor of European Law at the University of Zagreb. The article first appeared in Croatia’s Banka magazine (www.bankamagazine.hr).