The consensus between the main parties on EU related reforms will continue, although powerful interest groups and much of the public are likely to resist the fiscal and structural alterations required to meet the bloc's budgetary and debt criteria. Public support for EU membership has already fallen.
The European Council opened an excessive-deficit procedure (EDP) against Croatia in January 2014. The Economist Intelligence Unit does not expect the government to meet the fiscal targets, owing to a combination of weak economic growth and the political obstacles to expenditure cuts. We forecast that the fiscal deficit will not narrow below 3% of GDP until 2017.
We expect that real GDP will shrink by 0.4% in 2014, the sixth consecutive year without positive growth. We expect the economy to recover thereafter, with growth forecast to average 1.9% during 2015-18.

Country forecast overview 6

Highlights 6

Business environment rankings 7

Fact sheet 8

Outlook for 2014-18 9

Political outlook 9

Economic policy outlook 10

Economic forecast 12

Data summary 14

Data sources and definitions 19

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