The report is a comprehensive, comparative, multidimensional study focusing on 29 countries and administrative areas from Central Europe to Eurasia.
Croatia's democracy score is 3.75, a mild deterioration from last year's 3.71, the Nations in Transit 2007 report said.
The level of democracy in countries in transition is rated on the scale from 1 to 7 -- 1 being the highest and 7 being the lowest.
The democracy score represents the average of several sub-categories: electoral process, civil society, independent media, national democratic governance, local democratic governance, judicial framework and independence and corruption.
"While 2006 saw improvement in the space for critical reporting on sensitive subjects in Croatia, the reality of commercialisation, government influence and the sharp rise in sensationalist journalists weakened media diversity," the report said.
Freedom House stressed that the official government voice can be heard most clearly through the work of the national news agency HINA which, according to Freedom House, is under complete control of the state administration. "A scandal at the end of 2006 regarding the installation of the new editor in chief provoked the opposition (the SDP) to call for a dismissal of the government," the report said.