Wrong. The main purpose of the EU is to eliminate national parliamentary democracy. Politicians want more unelected and mutually appointed jobs, and to make it virtually impossible for voters to influence anything.

Hence the distaste for referendums.

Peace was NATO’s job. Still is actually. It’s the EU (EEC) who told Milosevic to try and keep Yugoslavia together which he interpreted as support for his policies. Now that is the little secret most people do not know about.

The whole Balkans place in Europe is as a federal state with all former Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria as one federal republic. Otherwise how do they expect this United States of Europe to work, breaking up a country, encouraging ethnic tension and hatred and then all of a sudden lets all be united in the EU federation. But unfortunately it is one big fail which nobody wants and sooner or later it will end in the same way as the Soviet Union.

Rudi, you once again demonstrate your complete ignorance of the history of Yugoslavia (as well as Croatia for most of the 20th century), which only reinforces my earlier point that when it comes to having moved on beyond the historical myths created and strengthened by the war, Croatia is actually lagging behind the majority of the ex-Yu Republics.

1) The first Yugoslav state was founded in Zagreb.
2) The intellectual underpinning for Yugoslavia was founded by Croatia, Slovenian and Serbian intelligentsia who lived in the Hapsburg Empire and were used to cooperating among themselves against a common oppressor, which was either Austria or Hungary.
3) In the early Fall of 1918, after the Battle of Carporetto when the Hapsburg military collapsed, present day Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and part of Montenegro (the Kotor Bay) proclaimed the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (Drzava Slovenaca, Hrvata i Srba) in the Croatian parliament. Vojvodina opted not to join it and joined Serbia instead.
4) Within weeks, this new State in Zagreb was occupied – its Dalmatia Coast by Italy, Slavonia by Hungary, and Styria was having civil unrest as far as whether to stay in austria or join this Slavic state
5) The Allies in Versailles engaged in diplomacy to marry this new state with Serbia, who was able to protect it militarily and also unlike the ex-Habsburgs, did not have the diplomatic standing against the likes of Italy who was on the winning side of World War 1 to lay claim to these territories.
6) The tragedy of Yugoslavia was indeed the different expectations the two largest nations entered with. The Serbs motivation for agreeing to Yugoslavia was to unite all Serbs within a single state, while the Croats initially expected to be the dominant ethnic group in a smaller Yugoslavia based in Zagreb, but had to agree to a larger one based in Belgrade where they were number 2 because the smaller one was not a viable state
7) The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes continued to have problems from 1919 until 1939 because of this issue – the Serbs simply so no reason to share power with people who did not win a country of their own in a revolution, who did not fight on the winning side of the Great War, and who could not even keep one formed out of the ashes of the Hapsburgs the way the Poles, Czechs and Slovaks, and the Hungarians could. Meanwhile, the Croats saw themselves as unhappy because Belgrade and the Serbs had replaced Budapest and the Hungarians in the pre-WW1 era – as another distant capitol where they had no influence on policy.
8) The issue was finally settled in 1939 when the Regency Council of Peter II who was young, and the president of the most popular Croatia party HSS reached the historic Cvetkovic-Macek Agreement which called for an autonomous Croatia region (or Banovina) within this Yugoslav state which by now had been called Yugoslavia for going on ten years. Macek became the deputy prime minister, joined the government, and the Parliament had become once the focus of policy, not the monarchy.
9) The delicate ethnic balance was destroyed by World War 2, when the Germans installed the extremist Ustashe at the head of a puppet Independent State of Croatia which included Croatia minus Dalmatia, all of Bosnia, and parts of Serbia (western Vojvodina) There, they engaged in genocide against Serbs who lived on those territories.
10) The principal factions from 1941 and 1942 who fought the German occupation was a mostly Serbian communist movement and an all Serbian royalist or Chetnik movement. However, the Chetniks were more timid in terms of engaging in large scale operations because of fear of reprisal against Serbian civilians by the Germans, which were constant. As a result, they were less effective. Tito and the Partisans by contrast had no such problems. In fact they believed that such reprisals only created more recruits of willing people who would fight the Germans. By the Tehran Conference, the Allies went with designating Tito as the main focal point of Yugoslav resistance and sent him all the military aid, while they stopped the Chetniks. This led the Chetnik resistance to then do what the Serbian puppet regime and their units had already been doing in Belgrade, which was to cooperate with the Germans to destroy the Communists. After the war, Chetniks and the Ustashe found themselves on the losing side and the Communists took over Yugoslavia. In addition, to bring Croats into the fight, Tito amnesties soldiers in the Croatian Home Guard (bot not the Ustashe paramilitaries) from charges of Treason if they switched sides for the Partisans. By end of 1944, the Partisan units operating in Croatia were about 60% ethnically Croatian.
11) The Communists were indeed undemocratic but they were continually decentralizing the Yugoslav state away from the Serb-dominated center. not because they were anti-Serbian, but because no other ethnic group’s national movement could threaten to replace their regime. A prominent Macedonian Communist, Lazar Kolisevski had a saying: “The Weaker Serbia is, the Stronger Yugoslavia becomes”. They initially set up the state by spinning federal Yugoslav units out of Serbian terrotiry: Montenegro and Macedonia, and given Republic status. In addition, Bosnia was created out of 80% Serbian territory and 20% territory from the Croatian banovina.
12) The only thing Serbia won was retaking western Vojvodina from Croatia’s Ustashe, but within a decade, Vojvodina was spun out as a “Serbian autonomous province” which received its own provincial administration and by the time the 1974 constitution came around, it was a de facto Republic with Belgrade having no say in its matters, it having a separate representative on the federal presidency, its own separate communist party with its own central committee and first secretary.
13) Kosovo, which during the war had mostly been part of Mussolini’s puppet state of Albania (south of Mitrovica), also engaged in wholesale killing and ethnic cleansing of the Serbian population. After the war, Tito prevented those Serbian refugees from returning to Kosovo because he didn’t want to “upset the ethnic balance” there. As a result, most of those Serbs settled in central Serbia and Kosovo was given the same status as Vojvodina, first a Serbian autonomous province and by 1974 a de facto Republic.
14) By the time the 1974 Constitution was voted in, Tito was dying and the Serbian intelligentsia was screaming mad. From the Serbs point of view, Serbia had been the nucleus for the common Yugoslav state, and Serbia’s diplomatic and military clout made the realization of the projects of the Croatian, Slovenian and Serbian intellectuals in Austria-Hungary possible. In addition, in terms of military and civilian casualties, the Serbs had borne the biggest burden in World War 2, yet the Serbs had less in the Second Yugoslavia then they did in the First, and after the 1974, which was seen as appeasement of Croatian nationalism in the 1971-72 Croatian Spring, they had even less than that. Almost as soon as it passed, a movement for its change began, within the context of a communist apparatus whose priority of free speech was not exactly high.
15) The political opening for that movement was given by Slobodan Milosevic, who by that time had never been anything except a loyal Communist apparatchik. However, having attended the funeral of Aleksandar Rankovic, a Yugoslav police minister associated with Serbian nationalism, he realized what a mobilizing force it can be. He embraced their cause, beginning first with the grievances of the Kosovo Serbs, who had been forced out of Kosovo throughout the 70s and 80s through a combination of exclusion from state jobs by the Albanian dominated communist party there, lack of economic opportunity, intimidation and violence.
16) This “anti-bureaucratic revolution” by Milosevic was opposed by Ivan Stambolic, the No. 1 man in Serbia (milosevic had been No. 2) on the same grounds that other communists and other republics would later oppose it – a) It was Tito’s constitution and Tito had willed it, and b) the balance of power between the republics and autonomous provinces would be upset by Serbia’s waking up, which would destroy Yugoslavia) Milosevic’s revolution removed Stambolic in Serbia, and then the installation of pro-Milosevic politicians in Vojvodina, Montenegro and later Kosovo. Suddenly, Milosevic controlled 4 out of 8 votes in the Federal Presidency, where Bosnia and Macedonia usually voted with Serbia on economic issues. The Croats and the Slovenes could not accept this.
17) Slovenia was the first to stage an opposition to the Milosevic regime and it all came to the surface at the 1990 14th extraordinary Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia where the Slovenes walked out. The Croatian delegation tried to broker a compromise, which in essence was telling the Serbs that there is no Yugoslavia without Slovenia, and if the Serbs don’t accept this, then the Croats would walk out as well which they did.
18) Following the disbanding of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, Milosevic began to concentrate on his power base in Serbia, which included stoking the flames of nationalism that brought him to power, and offering Serbs living in Bosnia and Croatia support for their plans to secede from those republics and join Serbia. Croatia elected its own nationalist leader, Franjo Tudjman, and that was essentially the beginning of the end of Yugoslavia.

So I have no idea what you had heard about the Yugoslav Communist state, but when it comes to this notion that Yugoslavia was somehow a Serbian “idea” or that the communists favored the Serbs over other ethnic groups, it is the biggest bold faced lie ever been told, and the sad part is that the majority of the Croatian population believes it.

Kosovo a tax haven? Who in their right mind would invest their money there? You can’t compare Kosovo with Liechtenstein, Luxembourg or Monaco, let’s be serious now. The plan for Kosovo was to be part of Albania not for it to be on its own, but of course the EU supports it to be on its own weak, powerless and exploited just like the rest of the Balkan states.

This is a classic discrimination of one nation. Mr. Sunny, it is obvious that you, allow me to say, “hate” Serbia and Serbs, and here, on public forum you are trying to change people’s opinion of Serbia. Here is the situation, Serbia will enter the EU only with kosovo in its borders. My opinion is that Serbia will only face the crash of its economy, and will not benefit in EU neither. We have a problem here in Serbia for which our politicians are responsible for. The problem is that every minority here in Serbia want their own specific rights. For example, muslims in the town of Novi Pazar (which is mainly populated with muslim people), don’t want to attend the Serbian language classes in school, and they want some made up “bosniak” language to be recognized and established as their main and supreme language there and to form their own republic of “sandzak”. I mean, come on people, in US everyone is American, no matter if they are from India, China, Russia, Mexico,etc. but here in Serbia, everyone is what they want to be. So they act as separatists, and the country has to take the counter measures to protect it legacy and culture. Albanians are building the monument to honor the fallen terrorists (Kosovo Liberation Army) in the middle of Serbia in Presevo (Town Presevo is outside of kosovo and metohija )! The same terrorists that killed our sons and stole our land. Just imagine Al-kaida to build a monument in Texas to their fallen “heroes” that fought against the Americans. I bet that America would delete the whole muslim population of Texas in order to protect itself. Don’t get me wrong, we don’t hate nobody, we’ve done some bad things in the past as every country did, and we are ready to talk and forgive, but first we will get back what is ours (kosovo and metohija) and than we can talk with Albanians. But if they continue to destabilize the whole region (Macedonia, Southern Serbia, Greece and Montenegro), in the near future, we will only face war until Albania is kept to a minimum size country, and all other countries are satisfied (as it was with Germany and Allied Countries in WW2).
As far as Croatia is concerned, I think that you people need to stop hating Serbs and Serbia. You still have the remains of fascist mentality (we saw it by football player SImunic, and your fans) and for that you should be ashamed of. About 90% of our tourists that went to Croatia have been tortured and humiliated. And here in Belgrade, every day I see a minimum of 30 Croatian licence plates and no one touches your car and your people, and yet you say that we aren’t civilized? Come on, you can do better than that! War in Yugoslavia was not all black-white as you think. Everybody say that Serbs are the bad guys and yet we suffered the most for your Serbophobia (read about it on wiki).
Stop with this type of discrimination, and be a human beings for once in your whole history.

Best regards to all good people who respect others but protect their own things.