Speaking at an international conference about what Europeanism would bring Croatia as of July 1, when it joins the EU, and how the EU would develop, Josipovic said that given the economic and institutional crisis, European journalists often asked him why Croatia wanted to join the EU and that he told them that Croatia was joining for the same reason that their countries did not want to leave it.
I believe in the EU idea, regardless of whether it will develop at two levels, as the first and second divisions, or if it will go on together, he said, adding that it was difficult to imagine that Europe could develop if it did not insist on fundamental values, notably peace and human rights.
Josipovic said the legal profession, notably in new member countries, was faced with a big challenge.
The question of law and the Europeanisation of our law is less a question of technique and norms and primarily a question of values and whether we connected our law with the values which Europe wants to protect, he said at the "New Europe - Old Values? Reform and Perseverance?" conference which began yesterday, discussing globalisation and Europeanisation issues in times of crisis.
The mistake is often made that the EU is first and foremost an economic community. It is so from a visible spectrum but the essence is something else. The EU is first and foremost an alliance for peace whose main value is to have eliminated armed conflicts from the European continent as well as the protection of human rights and dignity, said Josipovic.
He said jurists in the former Yugoslavia interpreted the understanding of the law as the grammatical understanding of legal norms and that the first encounter with international law and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia showed that the world thought differently.
The key is not grammatical but teleological thinking and law is a changing organism, and it is extremely important to draw the line between teleological thinking and arbitrariness, said Josipovic.
Over the past 20 years, Croatia underwent state transition, transition from war to peace, transition into capitalism, political transition into a multiparty system, with all the connotations on the front of democratisation and human rights, and structural transition, aligning its legal system with the acquis, he said.
We learned and corrected ourselves and finally met the criteria, including the legal ones, and on July 1 we are entering the EU, Josipovic said, adding that alignment with European law would continue.
This was the third conference on legal culture in transition. It was held on the occasion of Europe Day and Croatia's upcoming EU accession.