Croatia, in Croatian Hrvatska, is a country in central and southern Europe, independent since 1991 and the break-up of Yugoslavia, which stretches from the eastern end of the Alps to its northwestern borders and plains Pannonian in the northeast, to the coast of the Adriatic Sea in the south, passing through the mountain range of the Dinaric Alps in the center. Its capital is Zagreb and it has been a member of the European Union since July 1, 2013. Croatia's population has been declining slowly over the past decade (from 4.3 million inhabitants in 2007 to 4.1 million in 2017 ). Croatia is inhabited mainly by Croats (89.6%). There are also about 20 minorities, the largest of which are Serbs (4.5%), while the others have less than 0.5% each. The official language is Croatian, a Slavic language, which uses the Latin alphabet extended by some diacritics. Less than 5% of the population uses another language as their mother tongue. Italian is also the official language in Istria.
