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International News Title: ONe More Definition of Insanity: Croatia Given Conditional Approval to Join E.U. in 2013 LONDON — After six arduous years of talks on its bid for European Union membership, Croatia was told Friday that it should be able to join in 2013, but that its efforts to combat corruption and reform its judiciary will be monitored in the meantime in case they slip. Held back for years by its failure to cooperate fully in the prosecution of war crimes suspects, Croatia was then pressed by the E.U. to make a host of changes, including reforms to its judicial system. On Friday it was judged to have finally met entry requirements, furthering the quest for it to become the 28th E.U. state — providing the bloc’s 27 nations agree to that timetable. But the continuing regime of monitoring to be applied until then underlines how attitudes have hardened against expansion since 2007, when the E.U. admitted Romania and Bulgaria. Both those nations have continued to battle against corruption since then and have had some E.U. subsidies temporarily frozen. In a statement, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, said that he was proposing the completion negotiations with Croatia, signifying that it had met E.U. requirements in a total of 35 policy areas. “This paves the way for Croatia to join the E.U. as the 28th Member State as of 1 July 2013.” Croatia’s deputy prime minister, Domagoj Milosevic, told reporters in Zagreb, “just the fact we have concluded the talks will signify a new era in our relations with foreign investors, whose first question is always how far we have gone,” according to Bloomberg News. In Brussels, Stefan Füle, European Commissioner for Enlargement, said the move represented a “strong impetus for enlargement in the region.” Serbia’s hopes of starting talks on joining the bloc were bolstered last month with the arrest of Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander who has been transferred to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, where he faces genocide charges. The failure of the government in Belgrade to apprehend him had blocked progress on E.U. membership . Aware of the increased wariness among E.U. member nations about further expansion, Mr. Fule stressed that the European Commission will “monitor Croatia’s implementation of its commitments until the date of its accession.” If reforms slipped in areas like the judiciary or the economy, Croatia could then be kept out of specific E.U. policy areas relating to justice and home affairs or the bloc’s single market. The Commission has not, however, proposed that it should have the right to delay Croatia’s membership by a year in the event that reforms lose momentum. That idea proved ineffective with Romania and Bulgaria during their accession process. Welcoming Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor of Croatia to a meeting in London on Friday, David Cameron, the British prime minister, said it was a “historic day for Croatia.” “Croatia in my view belongs in the European Union,” he said.
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