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Croatia, the Euro and the Treble
At the Vrata Jadrana gas station near Rijeka, a line of impatient people has quickly formed at the bar counter. Some are holding a 10-euro note, some a 50-kuna note, while the cashier puts her hands in her hair and repeats regularly "take it easy, take it easy!", perhaps speaking more to herself than to the customers. On 1 January 2023, Croatia introduced the single currency, the euro, but for the first two weeks of the new year, you can continue to pay with the old currency, the kuna. According to government regulations, merchants are required to give change only in euros, but in practice things are a little more complicated. At...
Croatia in Schengen and Istria without borders
At the stroke of midnight, Croatia reached two strategic milestones. It entered the Eurozone and the Schengen Area. It thus became the first country to join these two communities that testify to its belonging to the continental family at the same time, less than ten years after joining the European Union. And while citizens were checking to see if they had euros for the first payments in the single currency at the stroke of 2023, in the last hours of 2022, many compatriots were eagerly awaiting the final lifting of the barriers at border crossings. The President of the Istrian Region, Boris Miletić, the Mayor of Buje,...
Croatia in Schengen
On 1 January 2023, Croatia will officially join the Schengen area (and the eurozone). On that day, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will be in Zagreb to celebrate, together with Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, a historic day for the youngest member state of the European Union, which will thus become a full member of the most exclusive of European clubs, that of the 15 countries that have joined the EU, NATO, Schengen and the euro. In recent weeks, Plenković has repeatedly reiterated how important this milestone is for his government and how much "hard work" it took to...
Croatia has made Remembrance Day a custom
In diplomacy, sometimes we proceed at a snail's pace, unlike politics, where everything - theater and little theaters - takes place under the spotlight. Small steps count and sometimes these lead to positive results and important changes. So I delude myself that I too have made some progress, with the recognition, by Croatia, of the "Day of Remembrance of the Foibe and the Julian-Dalmatian Exodus". In fact, since it was introduced in 2004 as a debt of gratitude towards the memory of the thousands of Italians who were victims of blind and brutal violence carried out by the Yugoslavian secret police and with various vendettas, inspired by class hatred or...
Slovenia and Croatia still fighting over Istria
Wars in the former Yugoslavia, 30 years later: Ljubljana demands a corridor to access international waters, Zagreb does not accept the arbitration ruling Thirty years ago, on June 25, 1991, the decade of wars in Yugoslavia began. Slovenia and Croatia declared themselves independent, but the fascist-communist president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, did not accept the dismemberment of the former dictatorship of Tito, who had died ten years earlier. The conflict with Slovenia was resolved in ten days with a few dozen deaths. The Serbo-Croatian war, on the other hand, lasted four years, involved Bosnia and was extremely bloody: almost one hundred thousand deaths. Finally, in 1999, the Kosovo appendix: to liberate the...
FederEsuli presents the issues of Adriatic Italianness to the Foreign Affairs Commission
A broad overview of the problems of Adriatic Italianity, both with regard to the indigenous presence and with reference to the Istrian, Fiume and Dalmatian exiles and their descendants: this was presented by the President of the Federation of the Associations of Istrian, Fiume and Dalmatian Exiles, Prof. Attorney Giuseppe de Vergottini, guest this morning of the Foreign and Community Affairs Commission of the Chamber of Deputies. The hearing - preceded by a timely presentation made by the President of the Commission Piero Fassino on the institutional context in which the Federation operates - took place thanks to the interest of the Hon. Vito Comencini, who introduced some of the...
Istria and Dalmatia: a story of immigration
In the 3rd century, Dalmatia was a central region of the Roman Empire. Even an Emperor born on that coast – Diocletian – had promoted the town of Split to a pseudo-capital, building a titanic palace there. But less than a century later, the lands of the eastern Adriatic found themselves becoming a front line. The Goths, first, and the waves of barbarians who followed them depopulated the rich regions of the right bank of the Danube. The border of Italy was marked near Aquileia, and the cities of Istria and Dalmatia became islands of Latinity in a seething sea of barbarian anarchy. The cities of the coast began to gather refugees who...
Croatia snatches away Italian historical figures
Croatia celebrates 30 years of independence… by stealing a dozen Italian historical figures by Emanuele Mastrangelo - 23/02/2021 Source: Storia In Rete Retroactive Ius soli in Zagreb, where a dozen Italians (plus several Serbs, Slovenes and Austro-Germans, some of whom are very famous, as we will see) have been “enlisted” as “greats of CROATIAN history”. This is the spectacle we are witnessing at the great exhibition for the thirtieth anniversary of Independence, at the Meštrović Pavilion in the capital. The exhibition is dedicated to 38 “great Croatian figures who changed the world”. They were chosen, the curators say, “because they were of Croatian origin, or because...
Italy and Croatia resolve the still open issues of the exiles
On the eve of the meeting between the Italian and Croatian Foreign Ministers, the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia hopes that not only current issues will be addressed, but also those still open regarding the Istrian, Fiume and Dalmatian exiles, their descendants and Adriatic Italianity in general. As the successor state of Yugoslavia, Croatia still has to clarify with Italy the methods for liquidating the compensation it is entitled to, based on the Treaty of Osimo and the subsequent Rome Agreements, with reference to the abandoned assets in its portion of the former Zone B of the never-established Free Territory of...
Milanović half-recognizes the sufferings of Adriatic Italianity
It is certainly appreciable that in Pazin on September 25, as part of the Istrian Region Day, the President of Croatia Zoran Milanović recognized that at the end of the Second World War "thousands of Italians" left. This is an acknowledgement that could align Croatia with the moment of sharing between Presidents Mattarella and Pahor that occurred at the Basovizza Foiba last July 13, but some clarifications must be made. The exiles were over 300.000, from every social and political background, including anti-fascists, and they represented 90% of the native Italian community that had lived rooted in Istria for centuries, in...
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