If no sudden changes are made, the three-day event will be attended by Presidents Alfred Moisiu of Albania, Heinz Fischer of Austria, Ivo Miro Jovic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgi Parvanov of Bulgaria, Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi of Italy, Laszlo Solyom of Hungary, Branko Crvenkovski of Macedonia, Vladimir Voronin of Moldavia, Horst Koehler of Germany, Aleksander Kwasnievski of Poland, Ivan Gasparovic of Slovakia, Janez Drnovsek of Slovenia, Svetozar Marovic of Serbia and Montenegro, Traian Basescu of Romania, and Viktor Jushchenko of Ukraine. The summit will be hosted by Croatian President Stjepan Mesic.
Apart from the heads of state of EU countries, candidate countries, potential candidates and countries bordering on Europe, the summit will also be attended by numerous state delegations, representatives of international organisations and business people.
Participants are expected to arrive in Zagreb on Thursday afternoon.
The summit will consist of two plenary sessions. One will be dedicated to ways of wrapping up European integration processes, and it will be opened by President Mesic on Friday morning. Presidents will address the session according to the principle of seniority, that is, years spent in office. The other session will be dedicated to the appropriate social and economic model for Europe, at which heads of state will discuss the issue with business people.
The event will also include a number of bilateral meetings.
Along with the Zagreb Summit of 2000, this year's summit of Central European presidents will be the biggest gathering of heads of state in Croatia so far and an opportunity for Croatia to present its interests in Europe and the region.
In 1994 the Czech Republic hosted the first such summit that was attended by seven presidents (of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia). Nine countries have hosted the summit, Hungary and Slovenia twice. Croatia is the tenth country and Zagreb the first capital to host the event.
Croatia joined the meetings of Central European presidents in Hungary in 2000. It was represented by President Stjepan Mesic, who had taken up office two months before.
After Italy and later Romania and Bulgaria started participating in the summits, the event no longer gathers only Central European countries and now covers one third of the continent. It has kept its original official name and is now more formal than in its first years.