Answering a reporter's question, Milanovic said that under current parliament regulations, the referendum should be held on January 7, but the coalition was thinking about postponing it to additionally communicate with citizens.

He was speaking to the press at President Ivo Josipovic's Christmas reception in Zagreb's Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall.

"We have been preparing for the EU for years. Croatia entered, of its own will or by force, into various arrangements and never in its history has it been at the doorstep of one organisation after such a long process. We are not drunken geese in the fog. Every new situation is uncertain and represents a sort of fog. We are more like an Airbus in the fog because we see this fog well."

Milanovic said the coalition was for holding the accession referendum on January 22.

"The European Union is a dynamic process. What is current today will change in one year's time and the key question in the referendum, which is simple yet difficult, is not whether citizens are satisfied with a negotiation chapter but if after ten years they are in favour of Croatia becoming a member of the EU as it is today or not."

Asked if the new government would meet the expectations on the economic front, of which President Josipovic spoke at the reception, Milanovic said those were the wishes of the president and of all those who voted for the coalition as well as of those who did not, adding that they should all be united on this.

"I have no illusions. Politics is a challenging and conflicting job. The opposition's task is to criticise, but we believe in at least some consensus and common sense to pull out of the crisis."

Asked if the transfer of the physical planning department from the environmental protection to the construction ministry was a concession to the Croatian People's Party (HNS), Milanovic said those were ministries of the Croatian government and not private ones.

"The government is a collective body. It decides by a majority vote which we will push towards consensus and not outvoting, so it doesn't matter what is in whose ministry. There's no story here, there are arguments for both. We decided that it should be in the construction ministry."

Asked to comment on outgoing PM Jadranka Kosor's failure to attend the reception, Milanovic said he did not know why she had not come and that she probably had her reasons. He refuted media reports that the coalition was against Kosor becoming a deputy parliament speaker.

The press asked outgoing Speaker Luka Bebic as well to comment on Kosor's nonattendance and the fact that she had convened a meeting of the HDZ party presidency for the same time. He said he did not know and that he had not been invited to the presidency meeting, but that if he had to choose between the meeting and the reception, he would have opted for the president's traditional reception, saying this was his political and civic duty.

The Archbishop of Zagreb, Cardinal Josip Bozanic, wished the new government to work well and said that everyone who could should help it. Asked if his cooperation with it would be better or worse than with the outgoing government, he said "the Church is always open to cooperation with everyone who works with people."