Government > Leaders Stats: compare key data on Croatia & Serbia

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STAT	Croatia	Serbia	HISTORY
Head of state > Term limit for head of state	5 Ranked 44th. The same as Serbia	5 Ranked 81st.
President	Ivo Josipovic	Tomislav Nikolic
President > Profile	<p>Social Democrat Ivo Josipovic was elected for a five-year term in January 2010. He pledged to fight corruption and help Croatia achieve EU membership.</p> <p>The role of the president is largely ceremonial. He proposes the prime minister but it is for parliament to approve the nomination. </p> <p>The president can dissolve parliament and call elections.</p>	<p>Serb nationalist leader Tomislav Nikolic won the presidential election of 2012 after several previous attempts. He beat the liberal Democratic Party incumbent Boris Tadic in the second round of voting in May, confounding expectations. </p> <p>Mr Nikolic founded the Progressive Party in 2008 in order to bring his nationalist supporters closer to the centre-ground of Serbian politics, as the Radical Party, to which he had previously belonged, was too closely associated with the Milosevic era of war crimes and xenophobia.</p> <p>The Progressive Party embraced plans to join the European Union and distanced itself from the pro-Russian, anti-Nato stance of the Radicals. </p> <p>It campaigned against unemployment, inflation and corruption to become the largest party at parliamentary elections in May 2012, building on this to achieve Mr Nikolic&#039;s win in a run-off against Boris Tadic a few weeks later.</p> <p>Mr Nikolic reiterated his commitment to European integration, but relations with the European Union seemed unlikely to be as smooth as under the pro-Western Mr Tadic. The disputed status of Kosovo was seen as the most likely sticking-point, but a landmark agreement on normalising ties between Serbia and its former province signed in April 2013 removed one of the major obstacles standing in the way of Serbia&#039;s progress towards EU membership.</p> <p>A week after formal EU accession talks began in January 2014, Mr Nikolic dissolved parliament and called a snap parliamentary election on 16 March, after the Progressive Party said it needed a new mandate to push through the tough economic reforms required by the EU as a condition of membership.</p> <p>Born in 1952, Mr Nikolic trained as a building engineer before going into politics as a Radical. He rose to be deputy prime minister of Serbia and Yugoslavia under the nationalist rule of Slobodan Milosevic, and later served as Radical leader Vojislav Seselj&#039;s stand-in while the latter faced war-crimes charges in the Hague.</p> <p>He ran as Radical presidential candidate in the last Yugoslav election in 2000, and then in the Serbian presidential elections of 2003, 2004 and 2008, coming a close second in the last two Serbian polls. </p> <p>He broke with Mr Seselj after deciding that European integration and economic issues should prevail over nationalist concerns, and went on to form the Progressive Party in 2008, reducing the Radicals to a far-right rump.</p>
President > Summary	Croatian President Ivo Josipovic	Mr Nikolic&#039;s Progressive Party has evolved from its nationalist roots to become more pro-EU
Prime minister	Zoran Milanovic	Ivica Dacic
Prime minister > Profile	<p>Zoran Milanovic became prime minister after his four-party centre-left coalition bloc defeated the conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) in elections in December 2011.</p> <p>The HDZ had held power for most of the previous two decades, but had come to be seen as mired in corruption - a view that was confirmed when former HDZ prime minister Ivo Sanader was put on trial for corruption in November 2011. </p> <p>Riding a tide of popular anger over government graft and economic stagnation, the Kukuriku (&quot;cock-a-doodle-doo&quot;) bloc led by Mr Milanovic&#039;s own Social Democratic Party (SDP) won 81 seats in the 151-seat national assembly. The SDP took 61 of those seats.</p> <p>Mr Milanovic&#039;s chief election pledges were to revitalise the struggling economy and prepare Croatia for EU membership.</p> <p>His government adopted tough austerity measures in an effort to avoid a further downgrade in the country&#039;s credit rating - which by the end of 2010 had deteriorated to just a notch above junk status - revive industry and attract foreign investment.</p> <p>Mr Milanovic&#039;s efforts to restructure industry - especially the country&#039;s ailing shipyards - and cut back on public spending in order to meet the conditions for EU entry brought the government into conflict with the unions and dampened enthusiasm for EU membership.</p> <p>Unemployment has remained stubbornly high. Shortly before the centre-left coalition came to power the jobless rate stood at just under 18%; by February 2013 it was closer to 19%, with youth unemployment at 51%.</p> <p>On the eve of Croatia&#039;s EU accession in July 2013, Mr Milanovic acknowledged that the bloc&#039;s economic woes had undermined the Croatian people&#039;s support for membership, but insisted that there were still many good reasons for joining.</p> <p>Zoran Milanovic joined the SDP in 1999 and became the party&#039;s president in June 2007, in an election that followed the death of the party&#039;s founder, veteran Croatian politician Ivica Racan, two months earlier.</p> <p>He then led the SDP into the November 2007 general election, which it narrowly lost.</p> <p>He was born in Zagreb in 1966 and after studying law at university embarked on a diplomatic career. In 1994, he went to Nagorno-Karabakh on a peace mission on behalf of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and was the first Croatian citizen to serve in this role.</p> <p>He is married, and has two sons.</p>	<p>Socialist Party leader Ivica Dacic formed a coalition government with the nationalist Progressive Party of President Nikolic in July 2012, ending an unlikely cohabitation with the pro-European-Union Democratic Party.</p> <p>A Kosovo-born protege of the late Slobodan Milosevic, on becoming leader of the Socialist Party Mr Dacic abandoned the more extreme nationalist policies pursued by his predecessor and after the 2012 election declared that he would continue the pro-EU stance of the previous government.</p> <p>However, he faced a difficult task in balancing his commitment to joining the EU with his supporters&#039; reluctance to brook any compromise on the status of Kosovo.</p> <p>A significant step forward regarding the Kosovo issue was made in April 2013, when Mr Dacic and his Kosovo counterpart Hashim Thaci signed an EU-brokered deal on normalising ties between Belgrade and Pristina. Following the Serbian parliament&#039;s approval of this deal, the European Commission gave the green light for the opening of Serbia&#039;s EU membership talks.</p> <p>Following the formal opening of EU accession talks in January 2014, the Progressive Party - which was keen to capitalise on its growing popularity as a result of Serbia&#039;s progress towards EU membership - lobbied for early general elections to be held in March.</p> <p>Opinion polls in January showed Mr Dacic&#039;s Socialist Party - the junior party in the governing coalition - to be trailing well behind the Progressive Party led by Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic.</p> <p>On becoming prime minister, Mr Dacic declared that his government&#039;s main priority would be to stimulate economic recovery. He also vowed to clamp down on crime and corruption, and under his administration several former ministers and tycoons have been arrested as part of the fight against graft and organised crime.</p> <p>In late 2013, his government unveiled a tough package of austerity measures, including plans to cut public sector wages, slash subsidies to loss-making companies and raise taxes.</p> <p>Announcing the measures, Finance Minister Lazar Krstic said Serbia would be bankrupt within two years if it did not take action now.</p>
Prime minister > Summary	Zoran Milanovic has been a keen advocate of EU membership	Mr Dacic&#039;s Socialist Party is the junior partner in Serbia&#039;s coalition government

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