Croatia–United Kingdom relations

Croatia–United Kingdom relations are the bilateral relations between Croatia and the United Kingdom. After Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia in June 1991, the UK established diplomatic relations with Croatia on 25 June 1992. Both countries are members of the Council of Europe and NATO.

the United Kingdom gave full support to Croatia's applications for membership in the European Union and NATO.

History

Croatian War of Independence and Margaret Thatcher

UK Prime Minister Baroness Margaret Thatcher was one of the most keen advocates of the Croatian independence during the Croatian War of Independence in the 1990s. In an interview for HRT in 1991 she said:

"At first people had been given to understand, wrongly, that it was just a question, serious as though that is, of civil war between two different groups. They needed to be informed that it was between Communist Serbia which has taken control both of the army and of the country, and Democratic Croatia and Slovenia, both of whom had exercised their right to become. I then duly explain that Croatia and Slovenia have no army. They have only got the weapons they can capture and the weapons they can get hold of, and they are entitled to a right of self-defence against those who have attacked them. I said early to people over whom I would have hoped to have had some influence that I thought, as the hostilities got worse and worse and more and more Croatians were being killed and massacred, that it would have been right to recognise Croatia and Slovenia as independent. Then we should have been in a position legally to supply them with arms with which to defend themselves and they would have been in a very much better position, and what is more, Serbia would have known the position the world was taking. Unfortunately that has not happened.