Croatia: Brand new EU member likely to face future challanges?

“As for human rights, we are not sure if we will feel a backlash like Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania did, especially with LGBTs and Roma population, or more like Slovenia.”

 

All these questions were answered by Zeljko Blace, co-founder of qSPORT, a Croatian organisation that fights against homophobic and transphobic discrimination in sports, and generally in social rights. Blace is aware of the enthusiasm of parts of public for certain changes, but is also skeptical: “More promises but few deliveries in practice?”

 

It is hard to say if that is a single page with fixed appearance, as many see it differently. For young people, this is a great change in terms of possibilities to move in academic networks of EU and take advantage of new opportunities - same goes for athletes in professional sport. For those who work in agriculture or industry it is great stress to measure up to new open market. In terms of consumer rights, most feel we will benefit in short run by finishing with existing monopolies and duopolies in supply chains of many services (especially power supply prices should change). Most people already appreciate that the mobile phone carriers are now obliged to follow EU standards, so prices and contracts will be more fair.

 

In terms of human rights, we are not sure if we will feel a backlash that was experienced by Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania (especially with LGBTs and Roma population) or more like in Slovenia. More promises but few deliveries in practice…  

 

Most lost enthusiasm for EU long time ago as this process lasted 10 years and it feels like it was at least 3-4 years too long. EU is now in crisis and Croatia is kind of late arriving to the “party” where place is wracked and everyone is a bit trashed having the last drink! If Croatia had the size of Turkey, wealth of Norway or authentic politicians of Island, then we could imagine staying outside of EU would be smart at this point. But given the circumstances and time/money invested, entering EU was realistically the only option.

 

Many things changed already in past years as most of LGBT activist groups professionalized and pacifised, became policy and PR/Media focused. We never established strong community with social bonds that existed in 80s and 90s in Western Europe due to long emancipation struggle or AIDS crisis. Instead of that, a handful of NGOs with few people are running them in antagonistic way while population splinters in gender, class, age and other fragments.

 

Many LGBT NGOs from Zagreb already turned their focus away from Balkans and local issues, to more EU/USA focuses on Marriage Equality instead of issues that are still problematic for most of Croatia. Those who are closeted or discriminated in the family, in health care system, education, job market, at work, in sports and even by others in the community will remain out of focus as they are not grant awarding topics.

 

If the country was any bigger, I would think in liberal terms that pressure of "pink" consumers as a market would be possible, but in 4,5 million people I do not see consumer power even in mainstream --let alone in pink liberal strategies. It is very likely that in next years more progressive politics for LGBTQs will be in political alternatives of new left, labor, green and pirate party then in any NGOs that monopolized LGBTQ presence in public and media.

 

First out gay politician from Laborist Party won the 2nd place in his own party in past elections although he was the 5th in party line. Candidate for mayor of Rovinj (small coastal city) was explicitly gay intellectual, so in that respect we have a new trend forming --similar to the one in Poland. On the other side, we have more open minded mayors in two most conservative big cities Split and Osijek that look affirmative to LGBTQ emancipation. Mayor of Split even joined the Split Pride this year as first mayor to do so in the region. What will this mean in terms of actual change in society? We will have to wait a bit more.