Croatia marks 15 years in NATO military alliance

Fifteen years ago today, Croatia was granted membership in the NATO military alliance; achieving one of the country's most important strategic goals since gaining independence in the 1990s.

Croatia's official accession was marked on April 1st, 2009, when the instruments of ratification were officially handed over by the then Croatian Ambassador to the USA, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović.

Croatia and Albania were jointly admitted to the Alliance as the 28th and 29th member states.

Following the ratification of the accession protocol in the parliaments of the member states and in Croatian parliament on March 25th, 2009, Croatia was sent an official invitation to join the Alliance just five days later.

However, institutional relations between Croatia and NATO were established nearly a decade earlier in 2000 through the Partnership for Peace program and preparations for membership were initiated two years after that with the Membership Action Plan.

The political decision to invite Croatia was taken at the Bucharest Summit in April 2008; and was brought to Zagreb from the Romanian capital by then US President George W. Bush.

According to the latest opinion poll conducted by NATO late last year, 72 percent of Croats would vote in favour of their country's continued NATO membership if a referendum on the issue were held.

President Zoran Milanović, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, who is often critical of NATO, said on Monday the organization "at some point it stopped understanding its own purpose".

"Croatia is a loyal member of NATO but we should primarily focus on ourselves and our own problems," added the president.

Croatian military contingents are participating in NATO-led missions in Kosovo and in the Enhanced Forward Presence in Poland and Lithuania, as well as in the Enhanced Vigilance Activity in Hungary.

Croatia is one of the NATO member states that has still not reached the set target of two percent of GDP for defence spending. According to an estimate for 2023, the country spent 1.75 percent of GDP on defence.

The 15th anniversary of Croatia's accession coincides with the 75th anniversary of the founding of NATO. On April 4, 1949, the Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs of the United States and Canada, together with the Foreign Ministers of ten European countries, signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, thus becoming the founding members of NATO.

Several rounds of enlargement have taken place over the years, including the admission of several Warsaw Pact countries following the end of the Cold War.

The most important section of the treaty is Article 5, which obliges each Member State to regard an armed attack against one Member State as an attack against all Member States.