Most Croats dissatisfied 20 years after achieving independence, poll shows

The majority of Croatians are dissatisfied with what their country has achieved since it proclaimed independence from the former Yugoslavia two decades ago, an opinion poll showed.

Asked whether they were satisfied with the “state’s achievements”, 58 per cent of those questioned responded negatively, according to the poll by the GfK agency.

Only eight per cent of 1,000 people questioned in April were satisfied while 33 percent were “both satisfied and dissatisfied” with the country’s achievements. The remaining one per cent was undecided.

Croatia proclaimed independence from communist-ruled Yugoslavia in June 1991, after a referendum in which more than 90 per cent of citizens supported the move.

But the decision sparked a four-year war with ethnic Serbs who opposed the independence.

The war, which claimed some 20,000 lives, and fraudulent privatisations in the 1990s deeply hurt Croatia’s economy.

And the global economic downturn has also hit it hard, with Croatia’s economy contracting for the past two years while the jobless rate now stands at eight-year high of around 20 per cent.

Revelations of corruption reaching the top levels in politics, including former prime minister Ivo Sanader, also fuel public discontent.

Croatia is in the final phase of talks to join the EU and hopes to join the bloc by January 2013.