The Croatian war for independence and the undemocratic character of the political authorities during the 1990s led to the late democratization of the Croatian political system, ie the delayed opportunity for democratic consolidation. Instead of democratic reforms and harmonization with EU standards that the CEE countries were already largely engaged in, Croatia for fear of the new imaginary community of South Slav, partly because of internal political reasons, partly because of war and war legacies, and partly because of the disparity and divide between political culture and structure - the rest of the decade has gone almost without any serious reform attempts in any field, linking Croatia at the same time to the "Balkans", and sentimentally to Europe. By the arrival of the liberal forces in the political specter and the left coalition in 2000, the process of democratization and Europeanization is initiated and dialogue with Europe begins.The paper deals with the political system of the Republic of Croatia and the analysis of the degree of its democratic consolidation in the perspective of Croatia's entry into EU membership, based on the criteria of Merkel's theoretical model of embadded and deficient democracies. It wants to analyze the status, reach and consolidation of Croatian democracy within the theoretical concept of embadded and deficient democracies by Wolfgang Merkel. Based on the analysis of each of the five partial regimes it will observe, analyze and diagnose their possible defects together with the levels of their internal and external embeddedness. Working through Merkel's conceptual model looks at the inner and outer loops and the main challenges in the context of joining in the past 15 years. Particularly emphasized is the policy of conditionality, and it is considered whether EU conditionality policy is an effective tool in promoting democratic change and consolidation of democracy. The paper deals with issues of ICTY and ICTY conditionality, a newly used form of EU pre-accesion policy instrument ie "culturally" defined type of conditionality. Social capital and civil society have been analyzed. Structural deficiencies, ie defects, have been found in the partial regime of civil rights (3) while sufficient external support does not provide the social an economic context. The policy of EU enlargement and access to political conditionality had a significant impact on democratic changes and consolidation in the country but did not lead to complete consolidation of democracy in the Merkel model, and for the full realization of consolidated democracy, all partial regimes will need to be supplemented. On the one hand, the EU approach encouraged the country to make more effective efforts in implementing the necessary political and social reforms. The main problem, however, remains that at the beginning of the accession negotiations and after their start, Croatia's policy did not have clearly defined national interests (political, economic and social), ie the main development goals and strategies for their realization. Development strategies for certain segments of the state and the economy have been made not as part of the generally accepted development policy but partly. In addition, the implementation was incomplete during the mandate of individual administrations, ie without continuity, since they were not established as part of the general consensus but on the basis of party (coalition) programs and the main topic of discourse took place around the date of Croatian entry into the EU and not about the preparation of the Croatian economy for the common market.