Croatian president and premier unlikely to agree

Significance

Centre-left candidate Zoran Milanovic won the second round with 53% of the vote. Grabar-Kitarovic’s embarrassing campaign performance only partly explains her humiliating second-round defeat; more significant is the growing split in the ruling conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), which backed her. The political scene may see major changes, but not necessarily a move to the left.

Impacts

• Political turmoil will hamper Croatia’s already limited capacity to handle its rotating presidency of the Council of the EU.
• A change of president may improve Croatia's poor relations with neighbours Bosnia and Serbia.
• Milanovic is a known quantity whose personal, political and diplomatic capacity will be an improvement on Grabar-Kitarovic’s.
• Milanovic has frosty relations with Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic, and Bosniaks remember him saying privately that Bosnia was not a country.
• Plenkovic’s weakened position will affect the Bosnian HDZ's leader, Dragan Covic, seen as neglecting Bosnian Croat interests.