ABSTRACT
As part of the independence movement in post-socialist Central and East European countries, the “return to Europe” discourse has been especially prominent and multifunctional in legitimizing national sovereignty and transitional politics in various ways and degrees. In Croatia it has also been the source for positive identification with democratic order and its values, as well as against the “spectre” of Yugoslavia. However, during the last two decades this identification has declined due to the negative impact of war, authoritarian rule in the 1990s, problematic elements of EU politics towards the Western Balkans and dysfunctional Croatian coping with the past and the present. Another temporal factor has been Croatia's prolonged accession to the EU. These processes have created latent antagonism towards the EU and consequently turned positive identification with Europe into a dystopian sentiment. Shaped by historical legacy and the recent development of the Euro crisis, this sentiment, expressed in Eurosceptic and Europhobic attitudes, has acquired the particular form of perceiving the EU as a new Yugoslavia. On the other side, similarities between current Euro crisis and dissolutive processes in former Yugoslavia could not be ignored, especially from the perspective of those shaped by such trauma. So, the current crisis and post-political processes in the EU could have an extra negative impact in slowing down processes of further democratization and political consolidation of Croatia and capitalization of its economic opportunities.
