Paper short abstract:

'The European Union is not cool, but our cheese and cream are!' With this and similar slogans anti-EU campaigns were launched in Croatia in 2005. In my paper I will analyse oppositional eurosceptic discourses that are grounded on the mobilisation of local reserves against global influences.

Paper long abstract:

Europska unija nije cool, ali sir i vrhnje jesu - "The European Union is not cool, but (our) cheese and cream are!" With this and similar slogans the political organisation SIN (Samostalnost I Napredak - "Independence and Progress") launched a rather spectacular anti-EU campaign in Croatia in 2005. The huge posters that were put up along main roads represent and foster a distinct anti-European sentiment in Croatia stressing local reserves against globalisation such as the country's "natural Mediterranean" beauty and cuisine, simultaneously calling for economic independence through subsistence farming, and inciting fear of terrorism that is portrayed as primarily endangering Western Europe.

Significant numbers of Croats, and Dalmatians in particular, understand themselves as guards of Europe and entitle Croatia Antemurale Christianitatis ("bulwark of Christianity"), a phrase that dates from the Mediaeval Crusades at the beginning of the Ottoman invasion. Indicating that they and their ancestors have successfully protected, and still protect, the borders of Europe against intruding forces "from the East", this theme increasingly carries the reproachful implication that their historic role is not adequately acknowledged in Europe today. Such discourses - alongside alleged inequities during the past decades - stimulate the gradual formation of a self-image that can be called a collective victim identity. However, forms of systematic self-victimisation are not only used to reinterpret past events, but are also deployed both in the articulation and rhetorical re-negotiation of current political issues and in setting the terrain for future debates and contestations of power. Recent discussions, be they in relation to the anticipated EU-membership or the collaboration with the War Crime Tribunal in The Hague, are perceived as a continuation of previous "wrongs."

I argue that this understanding is of central importance regarding the (im)balances of power and the role Croatia - along with the other republics of the former Yugoslavia and Mediterranean borderlands of the EU - is to play in a new Europe. The region continues to be characterized as a zone that has the potential to perpetuate and proliferate insecurity by imposing set borders and spreading conflicts elsewhere. At the same time, Europe's emphasis on multiculturalism, transnationalism and transmigration is of limited use and applicability to places where essentialist notions of culture and identity are gradually fostered to guarantee long-lasting stability.