Brussels challenges Ivan Turudić

Only 27% of Croatian citizens and 28% of companies believe the country's courts are independent. That is the figure sitting near the top of the European Commission's 2026 Rule of Law Report, published on 17 July (Commission, Index.hr). The Commission says corruption in Croatia remains "widespread", even though prosecutors are bringing cases. It can describe the problem in sharp terms. It cannot, by publishing a report, force Zagreb to solve it.

Busy Prosecutors, Empty Confidence

The Croatian chapter is not a story of institutions simply giving up. Anti-corruption bodies are in place. Prosecutors are active. Cases are moving. The difficulty is that none of this has produced public trust, and in a justice system that is supposed to carry democratic authority, that gap matters.

The Commission's rule-of-law mechanism is built around annual monitoring, recommendations and follow-up, rather than binding orders (Commission). The Commission itself accepts that implementation of previous recommendations has weakened across the EU (Commission). There is also no automatic route from a bad rule-of-law finding to the freezing of EU funds (EU Perspectives).

That is the difference between joining the EU and being inside it. Before accession, Brussels has leverage: it can slow negotiations, set conditions and make judicial reform part of the price of entry. FAZ's coverage of the same report cycle showed that clearly in Serbia's case, where weak rule-of-law marks still shape the country's candidate path (FAZ).

Once a country is a member, the machinery is much more awkward. Brussels cannot freeze money simply because citizens distrust the courts. Under Regulation 2020/2092, it must show that rule-of-law failures directly endanger the management of EU funds (Regulation 2020/2092, CER). Article 7, the EU's heaviest procedure, can suspend a member state's voting rights, but it needs a level of political agreement among governments that has never been reached against any member state. Poor survey numbers on judicial independence, however stark, do not activate those tools by themselves.

The Fight Over Who Prosecutes EU Fraud

There is, however, one EU body that can do more than write reports. The European Public Prosecutor's Office, or EPPO, investigates and prosecutes crimes affecting the EU budget in participating member states (EPPO Regulation). Croatia is one of them. EPPO cannot rebuild public confidence in Croatian courts, but where EU money is involved it has legal powers the Commission's annual report does not.

That is why the present dispute matters. Croatia's Constitutional Court has asked the Court of Justice of the EU in Luxembourg, the EU's top court, to draw the line between EPPO's authority and that of DORH, Croatia's national prosecution service. The Commission has intervened with a pointed argument: Croatia's chief state attorney, Ivan Turudić, cannot be treated as independent and impartial when that boundary is being decided (Telegram.hr).

Verfassungsblog, the German constitutional-law platform, has framed the case as a warning about what happens when a national prosecution system resists the EU prosecutor from within the EU itself (Verfassungsblog). The mechanism is the point. If Croatian institutions can use domestic constitutional channels to narrow EPPO's reach, other participating states will see how it can be done. The EU's only prosecutorial arm would then depend, in practice, on the very national systems it is meant to supervise.

What Brussels Can and Cannot Do

This is not yet a sanctions crisis. It is a clearer example of a limit built into the EU system. A member state can live for years with very low trust in its judiciary and persistent corruption, while the Commission records the problem, repeats recommendations and waits for implementation.

Brussels can diagnose Croatia's rule-of-law problem. It can enforce only when that problem crosses into EU money, EU law or EPPO's jurisdiction. Domestic democratic confidence, on its own, is harder for the EU to defend.

The EPPO case is now before the Court of Justice in Luxembourg. Its ruling will decide whether the EU's only prosecutorial body can operate fully inside a member state whose chief prosecutor the Commission considers compromised. The legal answer will come from Luxembourg. The practical cooperation will have to come from Zagreb.