Croatia on the Way to EU: Labour Law and the Free Movement of Workers

Abstract

The evolutionary process of ever-closer Croatian relations to the EU has been developing over years. Croatia signed the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU on 29 October 2001, which entered into force not before 1 February 2005. The SAA is an essential element of the EU’s Stabilisation and Association Process with the ‘‘Western Balkans’’. It is a comprehensive agreement, similar to the ‘‘Europe Agreements’’ with previous candidate countries, providing the contractual framework for relations between the EU and Croatia until Croatian accession to the EU. Croatia presented its application for EU membership on 21 February 2003 and the Commission published its Opinion on Croatia’s Application for Membership of the EU on 20 April 2004. European Council of 17 and 18 June 2004 subsequently decided that Croatia was a candidate country. Although the opening of accession negotiations was conditionally scheduled for 17 March 2005 and the Council adopted framework for negotiations with Croatia, due to political reasons, they did not start before 4 October 2005. In April 2005, the Croatian Government appointed the negotiations delegation and the negotiation team consisting of 13 negotiators (each negotiator is responsible for several negotiating chapters). Since it was decided that in the negotiations with Croatia acquis communautaire will be divided into 35 chapters (they used to be 31 until then), the Government also appointed 35 heads of working groups, one for each negotiating chapter, whose main functions involve the screening process and drafting of position papers for negotiations in the