ZAGREB, February 4, 2019 - Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said on Sunday that his HDZ party would win May's European Parliament elections convincingly despite the fact that some populist parties were trying to win over a portion of its electorate.
Speaking to the press during a visit to the southern town of Imotski, Plenković said that most people were aware of and appreciated what the HDZ-led government had done and would choose their true representatives.
"The HDZ will once again win the European elections because we are the only true Croatian and European party," Plenković said, adding that his party was also "the strongest nation-building, patriotic, Christian Democrat and people's party in Croatia."
He said that in Croatian political practice parties in power mostly lose public support, but that relevant opinion polls show that this did not happen to the HDZ this time, while at the same time public support for the strongest opposition SDP party has almost been halved and "protest parties" have no solutions.
"Some of the populist parties are on a mission to win over a portion of the HDZ's electorate and that's their sole goal," Plenković said.
The prime minister said that some of them would be pushing for a referendum to get Croatia out of the European Union. "They will be saying, 'why should others decide for us?', but those are just lies," he said, noting that Croatia had received 357 million euro for the Pelješac Bridge construction project and 165 million euro for the reconstruction of Dubrovnik's airport.
The HDZ's political secretary, Lovro Kuščević, told reporters in Imotski that the party was finalising its programme for the European Parliament elections and that it would be presented to the public as soon as it was adopted by party bodies.
He said that the HDZ would run on its own and that the names of the candidates would be made public soon.
Kuščević said that the HDZ expected to win at least five seats in the European Parliament, adding that the party would continue to raise public awareness of the importance of Croatia's membership of the European Union.
"We will continue to lobby within the EU for Croatian projects so that the development of Croatia could continue," Kuščević said.
More news on the European elections can be found in the Politics section.
