Visiting Duga Resa, 60 km south-west of Zagreb, as part of his campaign for the January 16 run-off, Mesic said he would focus his activities in the second term on reviving the economy.
He said the Eurosceptics should not fear joining the EU but that Europe might leave Croatia aside. He said the priority at the moment was for the teams negotiating EU entry not to agree with the Union "to freely export what we don't have and freely import what we have in abundance".
Mesic underlined the need to negotiate responsibly and during the talks to "increase resources, create conditions for reindustrialisation and open big plants".
Speaking of his opponent Jadranka Kosor's party, the ruling Croatian Democratic Union, Mesic reproached it for focusing so much on "defaming the president it will have to share the authority with".
He expects to win over 50 percent of the vote in the presidential run-off.