Croatia
The story
1990–1999 · Independence under HDZ
The Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), formed in 1990 while Croatia was still part of Yugoslavia, won the country's first free elections, led it through the 1991–95 War of Independence, and dominated politics, media, business and the military well into the post-war period. Croatian political discourse was — and still is — strongly shaped by nationalism and antagonism toward the country's Serbian minority.
1999–2016 · Toward the EU, with lingering nationalism
President Franjo Tudjman's death in 1999 opened a new phase: a broad domestic consensus around EU membership drove democratic, economic and judicial reform, and Croatia began meeting democratic-membership criteria from the turn of the millennium. Under Ivo Sanader, HDZ transformed into a mainstream centre-right party, adopted democratic statutes in 2003, and has won the largest vote share in every election since bar one — now well integrated into Europe's conservative family through the EPP. Nationalism persisted regardless: in 2016 the party appointed Zlatko Hasanbegović, who had portrayed members of the Ustaša movement as heroes and martyrs, as culture minister.
2015–2024 · New challengers on left and right
Human Shield (Živi Zid), later renamed The Keys to Croatia, an anti-establishment party resembling Italy's Five Star Movement, broke through in 2015–16 combining left-wing anti-capitalism with hard-line immigration opposition and progressive social views — before corruption revelations in 2019 sank it. Ahead of the 2020 election, singer and former HDZ politician Miroslav Škoro founded the Homeland Movement (DP), led since 2021 by Ivan Penava. Compared by some scholars to Hungary's Fidesz, DP campaigned on a total abortion ban in 2020, targets the Serbian minority and LGBT rights, and is softly eurosceptic. In 2024 it won 9.4 percent, becoming Croatia's third-largest party, and entered government with HDZ — its first taste of national power.
Also in the picture
SDP, the centre-left successor to the Croatian Communist Party, remains HDZ's main rival but has never formed a broad coalition with it. Most (The Bridge), a liberal-conservative party partly classified as populist, sits in the ECR group. A 2024 leadership split sent several DP members to found DOMiNO under Mario Radić.
EP elections
In Croatia's first EP election in 2013, the far-right HSP AS won one seat via an alliance with HDZ, thanks largely to candidate Ruža Tomašić — re-elected in 2014 and 2019 under different party labels and known for both anti-crime work and nationalist statements. ZZ also held a non-inscrit seat from 2019. Both lost their seats in 2024, when DP's Stephen Nikola Bartulica won Croatia's sole radical seat, joining the ECR group before later defecting to DOMiNO.
DP
Homeland Movement
- Economics Right
- Social issues Conservative
- EU Soft euroscepticism
- Authoritarianism Low