ABSTRACT
Since the beginning of the liberalization and democratization process in the late 1980s, the concept of Europe has played a major role in Croatian political discourse. The meaning of this concept changed depending on the context in which it was employed. In this chapter the concept of Europe has a twofold meaning. First, as a civilizational community of equal and sovereign nations during the early 1990s, and second, after 2000, as a synonym for the European Union and the accession process. The political discourse depicted and analyzed in this chapter is divided into three main periods, i.e. discourse phases.
