Croatia’s parliamentary elections for the 11th Sabor took place on April 14. These elections were highly polarised regarding issues such as corruption, relations with Russia, the rights of citizens of Serb origin in the country, and gender equality.
In the last eight years, many political corruption scandals involving government members resulted in the resignation of thirty ministers. This weakened the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), which lost six seats.
During a campaign rally in Split, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković criticised President Zoran Milanović of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) for his supportive stances on Russia, accusing him of “pushing Croatia and the Croatian people into the ‘Russian World'”. Moreover, Plenković compared the Russian invasion of Ukraine to Serbian aggression against Croatia in the 1990s.
The far-right Homeland Movement (DP) stated that partnering with the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) and with the left and pro-Human Rights We Can! is unacceptable. The DP’s program questions the representation system for minorities living in Croatia, including the Serbs, who constitute the largest minority group and want to abolish it. The leader of the DP is Ivan Penava, the hard-line mayor of the eastern town of Vukovar. Serbian forces destroyed this town during Croatia’s war for independence in 1991.
The HDZ secured the highest number of seats, 34.42% of the votes, ending its partnership with SDSS after 20 years of cooperation and initiating negotiations with the far-right Homeland Movement, which secured 9.56%. It is the first time in years that a party representing minority Serbs will not be part of the Croatian government, raising concerns about ethnic tensions dating back to the 1990s independence conflict.
However, the DP leadership appears ready to foment tensions. MP Stjepo Bartulica stated in a press conference published on the party’s official site that “Pupovac [Milorad Pupovac, the President of SDSS] will no longer shape politics in Croatia”.
With the party aspiring to impact the governing policy significantly, its views on minorities, education, gender, and social policies could be cause for concern.
“The ideological colonisation of Croatia will end. This means that any content that refers to gender ideology and attempts to indoctrinate children in schools will disappear. By our demographic policy, the last thing we need is for children to be confused in school. This policy will be applied, and we will no longer blindly implement what is imposed from the outside,” Stjepo Bartulica declared.
But what wants this new political party?
A nationalist agenda
Founded in February 2020, Domovinski Pokret (DP) performed spectacularly in that year’s parliamentary elections, emerging as the third-largest parliamentary party in the Croatian Parliament. Leading a coalition of other minor conservative and extreme right parties, the Homeland Movement won quasi-10 % of the votes and elected 16 MPs.
The party uses the term “patriotic spirit” for every field of politics—education, defence, foreign policy, and justice, among others—but in a remarkably abstract way.
“Patriotic spirit in the social superstructure (education, culture, sports and media): the preservation of our language, tradition and national Christian heritage in a large community of states and nations has a special weight, and the Croatian people and Croatia already have this experience in previous communities. The spirit of the homeland in the fight against corruption – (The spirit of the homeland against the evil spirit of corruption). The spirit of Croatian veterans is the spirit of the Motherland,” explains their Manifesto, “10 Patriotic pillars of the transformation of Croatia”.
Moreover, the Homeland Movement denies Brussels the right to decide for the Union and stresses that only national states can decide on their issues.
DP is also an anti-migration party, exaggerating the numbers of refugees and migrants in Croatia and their pressure on the country. It revendicates “the sovereign right to decide who is allowed to enter our country and under what conditions” and to preserve borders and protect the population from possible threats “by all forms of protection”.
Some of DP’s ideas are naive and vague, reflecting the party’s efforts to attract a wider public.
It pledges to deploy a vast decentralisation of central government by moving the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Osijek, the Ministry of the Sea and Infrastructure in Split, or the Ministry of Regional Development and EU Funds in Rijeka.
In the economic sphere, the “Patriotic spirit must make Croatia self-sufficient in the food and energy sectors… The Croatian village must be the heart of the Homeland spirit and innovative development.”
The official text reminds us of a state-controlled economy: The “spirit” knows that capital does not have a nationality. However, “the owners of companies and capital do” emphasises the Manifesto, raising questions about the environment it envisages for future investors.
Similarly, DP proposes higher wages, the abolition of Sunday work, and increased child allowances as effective demographic measures.
In addition, while anti-EU, the party recognises the benefits of the Schengen area and revendicates the right to free movement for Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Profoundly believing that “the spirit of homeland resides in Croats both in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Croatian diaspora,” the DP neglects the fact that the Schengen area accepts states and not ethnic groups.
Despite the naivety of some proposals, others raise concerns about the eventual social and international problems they can create, considering that the party will be a coalition partner of an EPP-member party.
DP wants to employ “the patriotic spirit in the transformation of education, science, culture and sports,” aiming to re-write Croatian History and encourage authors to promote the idea of national and cultural uniqueness.
“The winners write history. The patriotic spirit must bring truth to Croatian historical science,” explains the Manifesto.
DP also envisages a demographic transformation “in the spirit of the Motherland” based on the principle that the family is the foundation of society, while gender ideology and transhumanism are not!
“The nucleus of the patriotic spirit is the family, and the defence of the fundamental values on which the Christian family is based is decisive. We must not cross that line!”
Consequently, the party is against abortion. However, the Manifesto doesn’t specify if DP plans to ban abortions in Croatia.
Similarly, “the patriotic spirit” doesn’t clarify its intentions on the independence of judges.
However, the most waring point of DP’s “patriotic spirit“ concerns the Serbian minority.
The Serb issue
Croatia recognises twenty-two national minorities in its Constitution. The electoral law includes “minority lists“ that elect eight seats from an electoral district for national minorities to ensure the inclusion of all citizens. The Serbian minority holds three seats.
The Serbs are the largest minority group, representing only 3.2% of the population. During the War for Independence, the Serb army and paramilitary groups committed atrocities, including massacres of Croat civilians, which led to hostility towards the Serb minority by the new state and the population.
However, after more than 30 years, the Croatian Serbs now enjoy their EU citizen status and minority rights. The peaceful coexistence of Croats and Serbs is due to the will of the HDZ and the efforts of the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS), which takes progressive and pro-European stances.
Since the 2003 elections, the SDSS has cooperated with the Croatian Democratic Union in coalition governments, succeeding in strengthening national equality. However, in the July 2020 elections, the HDZ won 66 of the required 76 seats for a parliamentary majority. To form a government, the HDZ formed a coalition with the Serb party and secured the support of other MPs.
Why did such a successful cooperation end?
In the last elections, HDZ lost five valuable seats. As Croatia’s political situation is polarised, forming a government required establishing a coalition with the far right.
However, this coalition is problematic as the Homeland Movement openly expresses hostility towards the Serb minority in Croatia and the Serb Republic.
What is warring is that DP envisages an extensive territorial reorganisation of the country inspired by the “patriotic spirit”. The party proposes “a new organisation guided by historical, geographical, demographic, economic and fiscal criteria,“ which could target the Serb minority.
The party also wants to abolish the system of minority lists and allow minority interests to be expressed only through the national parties.
Nevertheless, the Homeland Movement bases its hostility towards Serbia on real issues that the neighbouring doesn’t respect, including war reparations to Croatian veterans, camp inmates, victims and all the families of the dead.
“Finding our missing people is the zero point for normalisation and establishing long-term relationships,“ emphasises DP’s “patriotic“ text.
Crucial next steps ahead of the European elections
However, the two coalition partners still need to finalise the details of their agreement.
“There is a lot that will have to be negotiated in the following days. For me, the content is much more important than the form from the beginning. I am not here for some duty and role. We got an answer to who will make up the majority, and now we have an answer to what the future joint government will implement,“ explained Bartulica.
HDZ will seek to avoid severe criticism from its EPP partners and Brussels.
Moreover, Homeland Movement is a new party that has yet to clarify its intentions of joining a specific parliamentary group in the Europen Parliament. Given its anti-Serbism, joining the Identity and Democracy group will be difficult.
The party will participate in the European elections for the first time. If it keeps the support it received in the general elections of April, then HD could elect between 2 and 3 MEPs.
