Croatians gave lukewarm approval Sunday to EU membership as 67 percent of voters said "yes" in a referendum on entry into the 27-nation bloc, according to partial results, but turnout was low.

Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic, who took office just a month ago, said the number of peope who cast a ballot was much lower than expected and blamed voter disillusion with politics in the Balkan state.

The results issued late Sunday were based on votes counted at about 25 percent of the 6,750 polling stations nationwide. Only a simple majority is needed and the vote will be valid regardless of turnout.

President Ivo Josipovic had predicted a "yes" vote, saying that the day Croatia can formally join the EU on July 1, 2013 would "mark a turning point for the better in Croatia's history".

"This is a big day for Croatia," he said after he cast his vote. "I'm looking forward to the whole of Europe becoming my home."

But Milanovic, whose centre-left coalition led by his Social Democrats (SDP) ousted the scandal-plagued conservative HDZ in December elections, said turnout in the referendum was "not great".

"It would have been better if turnout was higher," Milanovic told Nova TV. "People are obviously disappointed... this is a message due to the situation in the country, a message to my government."

At 1500 GMT, three hours before voting ended, turnout was 33.79 percent, the election commission said, a much lower figure than at the same time during the December election.

Despite the serious economic crisis within the European Union, Croatian opinion polls had suggested around 60 percent support for EU entry and all the major political parties are in favour of the move.

EU membership is seen vital for consolidating peace and economic recovery in the ex-Yugoslav republic, which gained independence in 1995 after a four-year war.

For the past three years Croatia, whose economy relies on Adriatic tourism, has been mostly in recession and the central bank is forecasting that the economy will shrink 0.2 percent this year.

Besides the economic crisis, Croatia has been rocked by a series of top-level corruption scandals, mostly involving the former ruling conservative HDZ party, that have fanned a general mistrust of politicians.

"Many Croatians feel that EU entry would be in a way a reward for politicians whom they consider as not being up to the task," Radovan Vukadinovic, a long-time professor of international politics at Zagreb University, told AFP.

Zagreb dressmaker Barica Kovacevic, 60, said she had backed EU membership for Croatia, a country of 4.2 million people.

"I hope that it will be better, notably for my children and grandchildren," she told AFP after casting her vote.

Opponents of EU entry said they feared a loss of sovereignty and national identity and voiced concern about what the EU could offer as it battles with its own debt crisis.

"It's like boarding the Titanic," said 57-year-old housewife Zorana Banac. "Croatia has the strength and potential to be independent and in the EU we would be second-class citizens."

While other post-communist countries in central and eastern Europe were strengthening their democracies and paving their way towards EU integration, Croatia's EU aspirations were halted by the 1991-95 war and its legacy.

It was not until 2000 that the election of a pro-European government enabled Croatia's transformation into a genuine parliamentary democracy eligible for EU candidate status.

However, enthusiasm for EU membership waned after long and often thorny accession talks that opened in 2005.