HRVATSKA U EUROPSKIM REGIONALIZACIJAMA: REGIONALIZACIJA KAO INTEGRACIJA ILI GEOGRAFIJA MOĆI
Croatia in European Regionalisation: Regionalisation as Integration or Geography of Power

Summary/Abstract: Croatia as a meeting point of various natural regions, cultural circles, languages and religions has had an extremely transitional character and has therefore, regarding the prevailing criteria of regionalisation, often been moved from one region to another. This has been the case for the last 70 years and Croatia has been, in various regionalisations of Europe, defined as a southern Europe, eastern Europe, central Europe, south eastern and Mediterranean-Danube country. Such 'removal' of Croatia from one region to another was a result of various criteria for regionalisation conditioned by changes in the geographical understanding of the region as well as by changes in the state-politics in the area of the European continent. In recent times, in the context of the integration processes of Europe, the formation of Euroregions is taking place, which is entirely changing the former understanding of European regionalisation. Namely, borders of older European regions had strictly respected the zones of a state’s territory and the regional borders always followed a state’s borders. The new system of Euroregion, which insists on the establishment of trans-national and trans-cultural regions, certainly has many advantages, however, in general trends of globalisation and crisis of identity it carries many risks. Under the mask of regionalisation, decentralisation and the creation of natural geographic entities without the barriers of national borders, it ultimately conceals integration and weakens national identity, within the goal of forming an overall European identity.

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