January the 15th, 2025 – 33 years ago today, Croatia was internationally recognised as an independent nation. With that being said, four countries still don’t recognise it…
As Morski writes, on the 15th of January, 1992, Croatia was internationally recognised by the then members of the European Union. Germany, along with the Vatican, played a key role in cementing this a few years later by establishing diplomatic relations with Croatia on January the 15th, 1998. That move also completed the peaceful reintegration of the war-occupied Croatian Danube region on the same date back in 1998.
When Croatia became internationally recognised on January the 15th, 1992, the Homeland War was still in full swing, and almost a third of the country was under occupation by the then Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) and Serb rebels. Croatia didn’t actually reach its recognised borders until six years later, after the peaceful reintegration of Eastern Slavonia and the Danube region.
On the evening of Croatia’s recognition, the first Croatian President Dr. Franjo Tuđman told the nation: “Today – January the 15th, 1992 – will be engraved in golden letters in the long fourteen-century history of the Croatian people in this area, sacred to us, between the Mura, the Drava, the Danube and the Adriatic.” He then told his associates: “We have created an internationally recognised Croatia. Let’s celebrate tonight, and then let’s roll up our sleeves and start building a new democratic state.”
Croatia’s international recognition gradually followed the declaration of independence on June the 25th, 1991. On that day, neighbouring Slovenia seceded from the now long-since collapsed Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ), and the very next day, both of these newly formed countries recognised each other.
The process of disintegration of the Soviet Union also took place in parallel. As the Iron Curtain finally fell, the Baltic states and Ukraine were at the forefront, recognising Croatia in 1991, although they themselves were not internationally recognised at the time. The first of them to do so was Lithuania on July the 30th, 1991, followed by Ukraine on December the 11th, Latvia on December the 14th, and Estonia on December the 31st.