President: PM and I will meet more often

Grabar-Kitarovic said that right now she was not thinking about another presidential term but was focused on the present one. "There is a year and a half left before the election. This is not an election year in any way and we should make maximum use of it for reforms," the president said.

Responding to a question from the interviewer, she said she did not think of running as an independent candidate if she decided to run for another term in office. "I won my first term as the HDZ candidate and if I decide to run again, I believe I will again have the party's support. I joined the HDZ at an early age, I did not leave the party in the most difficult times, after an election loss in 2000 or in 2011. If it had not been for the support of the HDZ and thousands of hard-working volunteers, I would never have been elected president."

Speaking of her relations with Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, the president said that they do not have to agree all the time, but that they always have to work in the interest of the state, which she believes they do.

"I would say that our relations are much better than they are portrayed in public. The content of our communication is not a problem because we communicate very well. The problem sometimes is the lack of communication. We have agreed to meet more often and talk so that there would not be any misunderstandings," Grabar-Kitarovic said.

Asked if she had any intention of becoming the HDZ leader, Grabar-Kitarovic said she was fully dedicated to her present duties.

Speaking of the position of Croatia in the European Union after the five years of membership and the fact that the country was near the bottom of EU rankings, Grabar-Kitarovic said that Croatia had found itself in the present situation "after years and years of wrong policies."

"If tens of thousands of people have left the country, we cannot say that we are doing fine. That just isn't true, we need to face the truth," she warned.

As the main reasons for emigration, she cited the excessive inertia and bureaucratisation of society, insufficient valuation of knowledge and competence, a widespread culture of nepotism, an insufficiently efficient judiciary and general resistance to private initiative, entrepreneurship and investment.

"Simply put, in Croatia people are always looking for a hundred reasons why something cannot be done and only after that how something can be done. This is literally destroying us," Grabar-Kitarovic said.

Asked whether the present government had failed to do its part of the job regarding emigration, the president said: "You must admit that during a year and a half in office one cannot reverse a situation that has been building up for years and decades. This is primarily the criticism of the situation in which we have found ourselves."

Grabar-Kitarovic said that preparations for the presidency of the EU should be accelerated, adding that one of the problems was the unfinished building for the Croatian embassy in Brussels.

"I have discussed the problem of the building with the prime minister and we are both dismayed by the fact that this building, which cost so much, is still unfinished. Almost nothing has been done and we have a year and a half left for preparations, which is very little time for the EU presidency. I think we started rather late with preparations and I dare say we are also late in training a team for this job. We really need to hurry," the president said.

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