"This article reviews the domestic processes involved in Croatian accession to the EU. This poses interesting questions in the light of growing public euro-scepticism in spite of consensus among the political elites and a media which was, on the whole, sympathetic to the project. The Croatian government, after some years of unofficial isolation, took some political gambles, presenting accession more or less as the sole aspect of the country's foreign policy and investing in it a significant amount of political capital as a result of a policy of attaining as high a speed of accession as possible. This had an impact on the effectiveness of the government's communications strategy. Reviewing the main challenges, the author concludes that the economic effects of accession, including as regards the labour market, may be only weakly positive, but a Croatia operating outside the EU would still face many of the same obstacles. Croatia continues to face serious challenges in defining a strategy for how EU membership will assist its social and economic development. "

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