Joyous Croatia joins European union amid crisis Paris: Croatia became the 28th member of the European Union on Monday, a seminal moment for the small, predominantly Catholic country about 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. President Ivo Josipovic of Croatia told Nova TV on Saturday that he was repeatedly asked by journalists from other European countries why the country wanted to join. Since the end of the Cold War, the European bloc's soft power, its ability to press for concessions, has been a powerful foreign policy tool and an alternative to US military might. In the case of Croatia, the incentive of joining the union pushed it to revamp a statist post-Communist economy, pass more than 350 laws and arrest more than a dozen Croatian and Bosnian-Croat war criminals. Tens of thousands of Croatians cheered the country's entry into the European Union at midnight on Sunday, almost two decades after the former Yugoslav republic's bloody independence war ended. In return, Croatia stands to benefit from gaining access to a market of 500 million consumers as well as about $US18 billion ($19.5 billion) in financing earmarked for the country from 2014 to 2020. Kosovo and Serbia 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 is an important step in the European integration of one of Europe's poorest regions. 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. Croatians wave an EU flag as they celebrate the accession of Croatia to the European Union at Ban Jelesic square in Zagreb on June 30, 2013. Croatia's entry is the bloc's first enlargement since 2007. To mark the occasion in Zagreb, Croatia's capital, thousands of Croats turned out to celebrate. Fireworks exploded, and Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" was played at midnight. "This will change the life of this nation for good," Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, told the crowd. I welcome you wholeheartedly. But many Croats 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. While Croatia is not joining the eurozone, the source of the worst of Europe's economic problems, it is nevertheless in recession and has an unemployment rate 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 the country wanted to join. My counter question was: 'You come from the EU. Is your country preparing to leave the bloc?"' he said. They would invariably reply: 'Of course not.' Well, there you go, that's why we are joining, because we also believe the EU has a future. If some Croats are cautious about membership, many countries in the bloc remain wary of expansion, fearing that an overstretched European Union will become unmanageable. The problem of endemic corruption in new member countries 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. Transparency International ranked Croatia as the 62nd most troubled nation out of 176 countries in its 2012 corruption perception index, which ranks countries based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be. Marko Prelec, Balkans director at the International Crisis Group in Sarajevo, noted that Croatia was an important test case for whether other countries in the region would be let in to the union. "If Croatia turns into a problem child for the EU, then it's going to be next to impossible for anyone else to join," he said. But if it goes well, then the doors will be open for its neighbours, too.