The appearance of Europeanness-Balkanness in Croatia’s self-image during the EU-accession

Abstract

In 2013 the European Union was enlarged with a new member, Croatia – a country specific in many aspects. Thanks to its colorful, but often also devastating history strongly connected to the history of other nations, the judgment of the country – a complex entity in itself – is under continuous change. With its secession from Yugoslavia, Croatia had to develop a new country and a new country image simultaneously, and it did this by focusing its country brand primarily on tourism and the Croatian national identity. This national identity – with which Croatia approached the European Union – then simultaneously had to distance the country from the Balkans, and emphasize instead a European identity.

The aim of the present study is to investigate Croatians’ self-image along the concepts of Europeanness-Balkanness acting as the basis of country image during the EU-accession. Researching country image is a popular field nowadays within marketing science, as more and more countries realize the importance of a country brand, not just within the global economic competition, but also in situations like the EU-integration. Croatia’s example is specific because its EU-accession was preceded by two hard decades of path-seeking, starting with independence and the war’s heavy pain and losses, and now, after 2013, it again had to find its way on a new map – of the European Union. By discussing the results of a survey carried out among Croatian business students at the University of Osijek Faculty of Business and Economics during the EU accession, the study is meant to prove how problematic is the relationship between Europeanness-Balkanness and country image.

In the introduction the present study details out the relevance of the chosen topic and the focus of the research. Then, it highlights topics from the existing literature, such as the societal elements of the country image aka the national identity in relation to which it shows many sociological and psychological aspects relevant to Croatia. In the following chapter it describes the so-called Croatian heritage through important historical milestones, and continues with the questions of the Croatian identity and the conceptual dilemma around Europeanness- Balkanness. After the discussion of this secondary research, the study presents the results of the above referred survey and examines it in light of the literature review. This is followed by conclusions and questions pointing to further research.