"Time is running out for Croatia, which is entering the EU (on 1 July). In the next two to three years we must accomplish national strategic investment projects and reinvigorate economic growth, for which we need investments," Ivan Domagoj Milosevic, the co-ordinator of the HDZ committees for the economy, finance and energy, told a news conference in Zagreb.

Apart from building a lowland railway line, Milosevic cited Croatia's section of the pan-European rail Corridor X, which connects western and central Europe with Turkey, as a key national interest. He also called for a system of irrigation in eastern Slavonia.

HDZ official Goran Soldo called on the government to scrap plans to sell the state-owned postal bank Hrvatska Postanska Banka and the insurer Croatia Osiguranje, which he described as a national wealth, for the sake of future generations.