Croatia Joins European Union - NYTimes.com PARIS - Croatia became the 28th member of the European Union on Monday, a seminal moment for the small, predominantly Catholic country some 20 years after it won independence in the bloody wars of the Balkans. With Europe roiled by financial crisis, Croatia's accession offers a rare moment of satisfaction for the union, underlining how a country's desire to join the world's biggest trading bloc can push it to make difficult economic and political changes. Since the end of the cold war, the European Union's soft power - its ability to press for concessions from countries that want to join the club - has been a powerful foreign policy tool and an alternative to American military might. In the case of Croatia, the incentive of joining the bloc pushed it to revamp a statist post-Communist economy and to arrest more than a dozen Croatian and Bosnian Croat war criminals. Elsewhere in the region, Serbia and Kosovo recently signed a power-sharing agreement aimed at overcoming ethnic enmities and proving to Brussels that they have the European credentials to join the bloc. On Friday, they were rewarded for their efforts, with Serbia gaining the go-ahead to start entry negotiations in January and Kosovo gaining closer trade, economic and political ties. The accession of Croatia marks an important step in the European integration of one of Europe's poorest regions that has struggled to shrug off a legacy of war and bloodshed. Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo - states carved from the former Yugoslavia - are all hoping to join the bloc. Slovenia joined in 2004. Croatia's entry is the bloc's first enlargement since 2007, when Romania and Bulgaria joined. In 2004, 10 members entered, including the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. To mark the occasion in Zagreb, Croatia's capital, thousands of Croatians turned out to celebrate as fireworks exploded and Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" was played at midnight. This will change the life of this nation for good. I welcome you wholeheartedly," Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, told the crowd. But many Croatians remain ambivalent about joining a divided union mired in a crippling debt crisis that has roiled Greece, Spain, Italy and others and pushed some members to the brink of bankruptcy. Croatia is in recession and is suffering from unemployment of 21 percent. Alluding to the challenges of entering a club in decline, President Ivo Josipovic of Croatia told Nova TV on Saturday that he was repeatedly asked by journalists from other European countries why Zagreb wanted to join. "My counter question was: "You come from the E.U. Is your country preparing to leave the bloc?" They would invariably reply: "Of course not." Well, there you go, that's why we are joining, because we also believe the E.U. has a future," he said. If some Croats are cautious about membership, many countries in the bloc also remain weary of expansion, fearing that an overstretched European Union will become unmanageable. The problems of endemic corruption in new member states from the east like Bulgaria and Romania has also fanned fears in Brussels that countries are being admitted too quickly, and importing lawlessness and graft into the bloc.