Mesic said this in his speech at the opening of the international conference "Croatia on its Road to the EU Accession: Lessons Learnt and Challenges", organised by the Delegation of the European Commission in Croatia, the Institute for International Relations and Trans European Studies Association (TEPSA), on the occasion of Europe Day.
"I have advocated an agreement about issues of key interest and not arguments about deadlines. Dates are not important. It is important how the time before the deadlines will be used," Mesic told participants in the conference, stressing that Croatia must recognise areas of particular importance and those by which it would contribute to a united Europe.
"Negotiations are neither trade not lobbying. They also do not mean the copying namely translating the European legislation. It is a process in which we have an opportunity to, maybe for the first time, publicly define our national interest," Mesic said, adding he expected of the public to agree on those interests.
Mesic said that negotiations were held in Brussels but reforms must be carried out in the country, stressing that reforms were an unavoidable element of the process of joining the bloc.
"Those who fail to implement reforms will not only be left out of the EU, but they will end up on the margins of development, as well on the margins of regional and global processes," Mesic said.
Croatia's head of state also said that the EU was accelerating the completion of transition with its mechanism and funds, stressing that the transition that Croatia was going thorough had created an enormous social insecurity and injustice and that it must not become a permanent state.
Mesic once again urged for a wide consensus about the need for an efficient public administration and the functioning of the judicial system which are "the conditio sine qua non" of all reforms, and expressed hope that the success of that process never again depended on election results, namely on a political option.
At the end of his talk, Mesic underlined the importance of the continuation of the processes such as the return of refugees, the restitution of property, full application of the protection of minorities and other obligation that Croatia was already meeting.
"There can be no calculations or lobbying in this process, this was not a on-off policy aimed at receiving a date (for the start of EU membership talks). This must remain the national policy which will be carried out without a doubt, exception or excuse," Mesic said.
Apart from Mesic, talks were also given by European Commission's Enlargement Director Pierre Mirel and the head of the Delegation of the EC in Croatia, Vincent Degert.
The closing statement will be given by Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader.
The conference is the central event of the Europe Week which will be celebrated in all major Croatian cities from 2 to 10 May 2006.
The event is attended by senior officials of Croatia and the European Commission, former negotiators from new EU member states and members of the academic community.
Two years after the biggest wave of European enlargement, they will discuss its impact on both the Union as a whole and, in particular, on the ten new member states. The experience of the latter that joined the EU in May 2004 is invaluable for Croatia as a candidate country.
The conference will try to provide answers to questions related to the real consequences of the fifth enlargement of the European Union, concrete changes in the new Member States, economic and political consequences of the enlargement, and its influence on the Union"s policy toward the South Eastern European countries. The participants in the conference will also discuss the effect of the EU accession on the political, economic and social process and structures within the acceding countries as well as candidate countries, bearing in mind the specific characteristics of the negotiations and reforms required.
One of the objectives of the discussion is to identify the different features of Croatia"s EU accession as compared to the countries that went through the same process in the past, as well as to present the current state and the main problems and challenges of the Croatian EU accession negotiations.
The EC Delegation in Croatia organised the event in cooperation with the Institute for International Relations and Trans European Policy Studies Association (TEPSA), to mark Europe Day, which is being celebrated on 9 May.
On 9 May 1950, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman presented his proposal on the pooling of the coal and steel production within the framework of a new, supra-national organisation - the European Community. In that post-war, unstable and tense period, the aim of such a community was not just the creation of a common market in coal and steel but, also, the preservation of peace. The Schuman declaration is thus the first document that initiated the gradual joining together of the Western European countries into a regionally growing and politically more inter-linked community - the present European Union.
The enlargement is one of the most powerful political tools of the European Union. It is a carefully planned process that helps the transformation of the countries involved as well as the preservation of peace, stability, prosperity, democracy, human rights and rule of law in Europe. With the official start of the Croatian EU accession negotiations in October 2005, Croatia"s European perspective was confirmed.