Croatia–NATO relations
bilateral diplomatic relations
Croatia has been a member of military alliance NATO since 2009, supporting the organization through multilateral cooperation and defence policies. The country entered into Partnership for Peace in 2000, which began the process of accession into the alliance. It received an invitation to join at the 2008 Bucharest NATO summit and became a full member a year later on April 1.
History
20th century
Croatia's first relations with NATO were established in 1953. That year Yugoslavia entered into the Balkan Pact, a loose military alliance with Greece and Turkey, then both recent NATO members. Croatia had considered holding a referendum on NATO membership. On March 23, 2007, the Croatian president Stjepan Mesić, Prime Minister Ivo Sanader and President of parliament Vladimir Šeks declared that the Croatian constitution does not require a referendum on this issue. In 2006 the Croatian government was planning to start a media campaign to promote the benefits of membership. In February 2008 a project named Bolje pakt nego rat was formed by Transparency International Croatia and iDEMO, and financed by the United States embassy in Croatia, in order to promote the NATO membership through public discussions about its benefits.
A May 2007 poll commissioned by the government showed that NATO membership was backed by 52% of the population, and 25% was against.
“Croatia–NATO relations” enters the record as bilateral diplomatic relations. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Croatia, NATO and relations can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Croatia–NATO relations” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.