THERE were no fireworks and no joyous, flag-waving crowds, although the president, prime minister and speaker of parliament did at least raise a glass to the strains of Ode to Joy.

Yesterday two-thirds of Croats who took part in a referendum on whether their country should join the European Union voted "yes", more than had been expected. The low turnout of 43%, however, meant that only a third of the electorate actually voted in favour. “It's not great, but it's legal,” was the accurate if underwhelming summing-up of Zoran Milanović, the new prime minister. Still, not a single one of Croatia's 15 regions voted against.

Indeed, one could fairly make the case that given the steady stream of bad news from the euro zone, Balkan Greece and Croatia's neighbour Hungary, a two-thirds vote in favour of joining was something of an achievement.

Croatia completed its negotiations with Brussels last year and, assuming no hiccups, will become the EU's 28th member on July 1st 2013. It will become the second ex-Yugoslav state, after Slovenia, to join.

Croatia's EU accession was negotiated by the centre-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), which was turfed out of office in an election in December. But it was backed by Croatia's entire political elite, from Mr Milanović's left-leaning Social Democratic Party to the Catholic church to prominent academics and institutions.

Parts of the nationalist right were opposed to joining, but the wind was knocked from their sails last week when their great hero Ante Gotovina, who is serving a 24-year prison sentence for war crimes, said that Croatia belonged in the EU.

Those against accession argued that Croatia should not seek to join a would-be federation only 20 years after having won its freedom from Yugoslavia. They counted among their supporters Marine Le Pen, presidential candidate for the far-right National Front in France; Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-EU UK Independence Party; and David Icke, a British former television sports presenter who argues that members of the British royal family and American presidents are descended from alien reptiles.

According to Ines Sabalić, the Brussels correspondent for a number of Croatian newspapers, the prevailing mood in Croatia was of fear. Croats have always believed that they are part of “Europe” rather than the Balkans, and have looked west rather than east. But, she says, belonging to Europe today demands a lot of optimism. Croats have had to bet that their future will be better on the inside than languishing irrelevantly, Moldovan-style, on the outside.

The Croatian vote has been greeted with relief in the rest of the western Balkans. A “no” would probably have been catastrophic for the accession plans of other countries in the region. Sceptics about western-Balkan accession in Brussels and elsewhere would have been able to argue that if the Croats did not want to join, the EU should not bother helping the rest of the region to do so.

But with the EU facing one of the biggest challenges in its history in the form of the euro crisis, don't expect much movement on further enlargement any time soon. Croatia may have squeaked in just as the door is closing.

