"We are ready to build a European identity in which our national identity will become part of its foundation, but which will make us recognisable not only as a historical people, but also as builders of Europe's today and tomorrow," he said at the "European Identity - Future Prospects" forum, organised by the BMW Herbert Quandt foundation.
Mesic said the European identity "will be a sum of national identities," but underlined that "it will not and must not be only that". He added this sum of identities would also have "the additional element of European community".
Mesic said the adoption of the European identity would not wipe out national identity and that "we in Croatia have yet to explain this to our citizens".
He maintained that the European identity should comprise significant elements of national particularities and the most significant achievements of social development. He said it would also contain a new dimension which "is being built parallel to the adoption of European standards and the meeting of conditions required to join the EU".
"We have to accept united Europe not only as our wish but also as our destiny," Mesic said, adding that for the first time in history Europe was uniting by the will of its peoples and states.
"As far as Croatia is concerned, our commitment is clear and irreversible. We see our place and our future in united Europe. This commitment is not the result of a desire to humour someone else, but an expression of the realisation that we will provide our citizens with a better life only within united Europe."
The BMW Herbert Quandt foundation was established in 1970 in memory of the German entrepreneur who renewed the BMW automobile concern in the early 1970s. Its main goal is to improve dialogue among representatives of the economy, politics and society.
Also in attendance were Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, Czech Deputy Prime Minister Martin Jahn, European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet, and former German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher.
Mesic arrived in Berlin yesterday, meeting German President Horst Koehler and attending the opening of an exhibition on archaeological sites in Istria. He is due to return to Croatia this afternoon after visiting the Holocaust memorial opened in May.