The European People's Party's lead candidate for European Commission president, Manfred Weber, said in Zagreb on Saturday he wanted the next Commission to be the voice and representative of European nations' interests.

“Good politics begins with listening,” he said.

“By listening to the worries and hopes of nations, which we as the EP do. We want to be a party of nations and I want to create a European Commission of nations,” Weber told reporters, as he began the last leg of his campaign a week before European Parliament elections in the Croatian capital.

Speaking in front of a 441 m2 campaign poster, Weber said he could not have thought of a better place to start the final campaign than Zagreb.

He said Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic was one of the strongest players in the European Council and that under his leadership, Croatia, as one of the newest EU member states, was among the countries contributing the most to European development.

Right-wing and left-wing extremists and populists are not the solution for Europe, which is becoming increasingly evident, said Weber.

Plenkovic said he was pleased that Weber would see today the kind of support he, the EPP and his own HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) party enjoyed in Croatia.

Later in the day, Weber and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will attend the HDZ’s last election rally before the EP elections.

“I’m looking forward to the fact that today, at the biggest election rally in this campaign, we will have the opportunity to once again send messages of unity, key messages for Europe’s future, for Croatia’s future, messages of development, social cohesion, solidarity and inclusion, the significance of our common European values which include patriotism, but within the European family, because in that way interests are protected more strongly,” Plenkovic told reporters.

The press was also addressed by the EPP vice president and coordinator of its election campaign, Dara Murphy of Ireland, who said the poster, made up of thousands of photos of Weber on his campaign trail around Europe, showed that the EPP was a people’s party. He added that next week’s elections would be the most important elections Europe had ever seen.