Croatia, which wants to join the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, made progress in 2023 in meeting the requirements but is the last among the six candidates in terms of the number of the requirements met, per the OECD.

A country becomes a member after adopting 247 legal instruments. Croatia has adopted 49 to date, Brazil 131, Romania 81, Bulgaria 64, Argentina 62 and Peru 55.

The OECD legal instruments are decisions, recommendations and international agreements which countries must transpose into their legal systems.

The OECD was established in 1961 and comprises 38 countries which call themselves liberal democracies and market economies. The OECD is financed by its member states which discuss global issues at their meetings and publish economic analyses and forecasts. The Paris-headquartered OECD recommends to its member states which economic policies to pursue.

Joining the OECD is the Croatian government’s “last foreign policy goal”, having joined the euro and Schengen areas in 2023, Foreign Minister Gordan Grlic-Radman told the press recently. “We are among the first in terms of meeting the criteria of implementing laws, policies and practices.”

Croatia ranks last among the six OECD aspirants in terms of the number of legal instruments adopted to date but second in terms of those adopted in 2023. Romania adopted nine and Croatia six last year.

Croatia will adopt another legal instrument on 21 January, when it will officially become a signatory to the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions.

Croatia was the only one of the six OECD aspirants that had not acceded to the Convention. In November, OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said Croatia’s accession represented an important step on its path to OECD membership by aligning with OECD standards and best practices.

The OECD opened the accession procedure with Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, Argentina, Brazil and Peru in January 2022, five years after Croatia applied for accession.