By VESNA SKARE OZBOLT

March 2, 2006

ZAGREB, Croatia -- The weak state of my country's courts and laws is one of the main hurdles to our membership in the European Union. I should know. As justice minister I worked long and hard to reform the judiciary and root out corruption.

Last month, I was pushed out of office by my coalition partners, accused of criticizing the government and speaking my mind. I tried to fix a rotten system, and only regret that I couldn't finish the job this time. My experience helps show why Croatia is having so much trouble in its negotiations with the EU.

Back in 2004, my Democratic Center Party entered the government formed by the Croatian Democratic Union (or HDZ) as the smallest coalition partner, and we were offered one of the most important but difficult posts.

When I arrived on the job, Croatia's justice ministry was in bad shape. At the land registry department we had a backlog of 1.5 million cases. In a new country like Croatia, born out of the breakup of the old socialist Yugoslavia and a decade of war in the region, land claims are contentious. But they'd been completely neglected.

Another legacy of those days was the sheer size of the judiciary. In per capita terms, Croatia had the most courts and judges of any European country, as well as the largest backlog of cases. The EU accession process, with its emphasis on administrative reform, helped focus us on the necessary changes.

In spite of these great challenges, we got visible and concrete results. The land registry books were put on the Internet and the backlog of contested claims was reduced by 15%, once courts became computerized. Making the process more transparent made it less prone to corruption. Clearing up property claims also improved the business environment and marked a big step toward putting in place the rule of law.

Croatia founded a judicial academy to train judges and state attorneys. We started to reorganize and reduce the number of courts.

Real progress was made in the fight against corruption. The State Attorney's Office has been strengthened in order to fight the problem head on. Penalties for almost 80% of criminal offences involving corruption have been stiffened.

Last December, Ante Gotovina was arrested in Spain, proving that the indicted war criminal was not in Croatia and lifting the biggest cloud hanging over our EU ambitions. Our cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague was the other priority. I am glad to say that we were able to start talks with the EU, which were frozen over this issue.

The country's business and legal community, the World Bank and the European Commission wholeheartedly welcomed the changes put in place by the ministry. But all effective reforms inevitably encounter opposition from entrenched interest groups and lobbies, who prefer to play by the old rules of the game. Croatia proved no different.

My problems with our coalition partners, who weren't as committed to the European agenda as my party, were always under the surface but came out into the open over a judicial appointment. (George W. Bush isn't the only one who finds these decisions trying.) When the time came to name the president of the Zagreb County Court -- the job of the minister -- I took the advice of the professionals in the ministry over the wishes of the governing coalition. I have always said that Croatia needed to create a clear divide between the executive and judicial branch, as in any other European democracy. In this nomination, I had no choice; my credibility, and that of the whole reform program, were on the line. But that didn't sit well with my coalition partners.

From there it got worse. The ministry's efforts to adopt an anticorruption strategy, which was positively evaluated by NGOs and the Council of Europe, were ignored or blocked at the cabinet level. Soon after Prime Minister Ivo Sanader broke the coalition pact with the Democratic Center Party, and replaced me with a minister who was best known abroad for hanging a portrait of Gen. Gotovina on her government office wall.

The official pretext was that I disclosed the legal fees of lawyers appointed for Croatian defendants at The Hague. This accusation was untrue. But I must add that these fees were paid by the state and aren't supposed to be a secret.

My removal was immediate. The prime minister never explained the reasons for my dismissal or for breaking the partnership with my party. Of course, the real reason was that the HDZ wanted to form a coalition with the Croatian Party of the Right, an extremist nationalist block in parliament, as is their right. My centrist party had no place here.

So what's happened since? The anticorruption proposals have been watered down, even though fighting corruption is now the top priority for EU negotiators. The EU this week postponed until September a planned review of the judiciary system, as part of the accession process, because of concerns about corruption and rule of law. That's a bad signal.

Croatia's road to Europe has been, and will continue to be, a bumpy one. After the recent setbacks, it's hard to be optimistic. But I continue to be so, as ordinary Croats want a clean and democratic government that can meet the standards set by the EU.

Ms. Skare Ozbolt, who was Croatia's justice minister from 2004 until last month, is the president of the Democratic Center Party.

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