THE CRISIS, NEW EU POLICIES, AND THE REPUBLIC OF CROATIA

The period from 2007 until today has been characterized by two extreme events: a) an economic crisis of global extent and reach; and b) rapid and powerful reactions by individual countries and regions of the world in response to those disturbances, keeping in mind the consequences of the dilatory reactions to the Great Depression of 1929-1933. In this context, and after a certain time, the EU began a series of systematic changes and coordination within its institutional framework and undertook concrete measures with the goal of correcting national economic policies, and at the same time it also established the coordination, supervision, and implementation of (non)binding recommendations for individual member countries. The measures were applied to public finance, to reducing deficits in national budgets at the level of the Maastricht criteria and to encouraging structural reforms, proportionately to each particular member state. Since 2010, the overall program of these coordinating activities and their regular monitoring has taken place within the framework of the European Semester. On the basis of its full membership in the EU (since 1 July 2013) the Republic of Croatia in 2014 has been completely included in the regulations and obligations that arise from that program: from procedures to reduce excessive deficits over the next three years (2014-2016) to a series of structural changes within a special national program in the framework of the European Semester. What to do to fulfill the formal conditions and criteria, and moreover to raise the performance level of the national economy not only within the EU but globally, is the fundamental question and challenge that the Republic of Croatia is facing in the new economic framework of the EU.