Brussels challenges Turudić's independence

Only 27% of Croatian citizens and 28% of companies believe their courts are independent, according to the European Commission's 2026 Rule of Law Report, published on 17 July (Commission, Index.hr). The Commission says corruption remains "widespread", even while prosecutors are actively bringing cases. The report names the problem. It does not, by itself, force Zagreb to solve it.

Busy Prosecutors, Empty Confidence

The Croatian chapter is not a story of institutions simply giving up. Anti-corruption bodies exist. Prosecutors are working. But the distance between that activity and public trust is wide enough to matter, especially for a country already inside the EU.

The Commission's rule-of-law mechanism works mainly through annual reporting, recommendations and follow-up talks with governments (Commission). That is useful as pressure, but it is not an order. The Commission itself admits that implementation of previous recommendations has weakened across the EU (Commission), and there is no automatic link between a bad rule-of-law assessment and the suspension of EU funds (EU Perspectives).

This is the difference between accession politics and membership politics. Before a country joins the EU, Brussels has real leverage: it can slow negotiations and make reforms the price of entry. FAZ's reporting on the same cycle showed that contrast through Serbia, where negative rule-of-law marks still shape the path of a candidate country (FAZ).

Once a state is inside, the tools narrow. Brussels cannot freeze money because citizens distrust their courts. It must show that rule-of-law failures directly threaten the management of EU funds (Regulation 2020/2092, CER). Article 7, the EU's harshest procedure and the one that can suspend voting rights, needs political agreement among governments that has never been reached against any member state. Low trust in the judiciary, on its own, does not unlock those powers.

The Fight Over Who Prosecutes EU Fraud

There is one EU body that can do more than report. The European Public Prosecutor's Office, or EPPO, can investigate and prosecute crimes affecting the EU budget in participating member states (EPPO Regulation). Croatia participates. EPPO cannot rebuild public confidence in Croatian courts, but when EU money is involved, it has legal authority the annual rule-of-law report does not.

That authority is now being tested. Croatia's Constitutional Court has asked the Court of Justice of the EU, the bloc's top court in Luxembourg, to define the line between EPPO's powers and those of Croatia's national prosecution service, DORH. The Commission has intervened, arguing that Croatia's chief state attorney, Ivan Turudić, cannot be treated as independent and impartial in deciding that boundary (Telegram.hr). Verfassungsblog, the German constitutional-law platform, has framed the case as a warning about what happens when a national prosecution system pushes back against the EU prosecutor from within the Union itself (Verfassungsblog).

The issue is plain. If Croatian institutions manage to narrow EPPO's reach through domestic constitutional channels, other participating states will have a model to copy. The EU's only prosecutorial arm would then depend on the very national systems it is meant to check.

What Brussels Can and Cannot Do

This is not yet a sanctions crisis. It is a clearer example of a structural limit in the EU system. A member state can carry very low trust in its courts and persistent corruption for years while the Commission records the problem and repeats its recommendations. Brussels can enforce only when the problem touches EU money, EU law or EPPO jurisdiction. It has far less power when the damage is to domestic democratic confidence itself.

The EPPO competence dispute 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. Luxembourg will give the legal answer. Zagreb will decide what cooperation looks like in practice.