Milanovic was speaking in a Croatian Television interview, asked what he could tell citizens who still do not feel that they live better and to the more than 330,000 jobless.

"The trigger could be next year, because for this year we set ourselves mediocre, i.e. moderate goals," he said, adding that "there's a whole term of work ahead" for his government, which he said was met with many challenges.

He called the government's decision yesterday to raise the prices of electricity and gas "economically necessary."

"In order to prevent the collapse of strategic systems in Croatia, those prices had to go up," he said, hopeful that was "the last such bad news."

Asked if citizens were hostages to the poor state of affairs in the HEP power company and why a decision was not made to restructure HEP, Milanovic said those were two separate processes.

On the one hand, we had to increase the price of electricity, which is still among the lowest in Europe, while on the other, we must start bringing order into and reform the monopoly systems in the state, he said.

Commenting on union protests announced for May 1 and announcements that the government would be given a yellow card, Milanovic said he did not see them as a threat against his cabinet, as "citizens give yellow and red cards at elections."

"Citizens are the only arbiters in this process and unions always get organised and protest on May 1. That's normal. It's not normal if they don't do it, which was the case on May 1 last year."

Responding to a question, Milanovic said he stuck by the decision that Finance Minister Slavko Linic and Economy Minister Radimir Cacic should be appointed to the supervisory board of the oil company INA despite criticisms from Brussels.

That issue has a technical and a political level. Sometimes, unfortunately, we are hostages to bad arrangements that the former government shouldn't have made, he said.

He said the former government passed a Conflict of Interest Act in order to appoint its people to the Conflict of Interest Commission as a parallel police body.

"My majority can now take advantage of that law, but I don't want to have it as an instrument, I don't need it," he said, adding that he wanted to set the control of conflict of interest differently.

Commenting on his forthcoming trip to Hungary and possible talks on the Hungarian oil company MOL and INA, Milanovic said the INA-MOL deal was made at a time when the Hungarian state practically had no ownership in MOL.

"Those deals were made by our then politicians - our government and the leadership of one political party - and one international oil company which has many owners and which arranged that, in our opinion, to Croatia's detriment."

He recalled that in the meantime, the Hungarian government had bought a 25 per cent stake in MOL.

They have interests in the whole story just as the Croatian state, which owns 44.7 per cent of INA. This is a topic for discussion. We won't force anything, but the company's prosperity and profit is our joint interest, said Milanovic.

Responding to a question, he said there were bidders for the 3. Maj shipyard.

Asked about this year's commemoration of the WW2 Bleiburg tragedy, Milanovic said he would go to Tezno, Slovenia, with President Ivo Josipovic and Parliament Speaker Boris Sprem on May 15, adding that "the real victims of the execution" were there.

As the prime minister of Croatia, I feel the obligation to pay my respects to the people who were killed there in their thousands. We are going to Tezno because the execution site there carries both actual and symbolic weight. Bleiburg may carry symbolic weight for some people, I can accept that, but that's not the place to commemorate the victims, Milanovic said.