While presenting the SDP program in the midst of the election campaign, he emphasized equality.
"When I say equality, we present it in three important respects. The first is equality of citizens. 4 million of Croatian citizens must be more equal or at least equal to the other 500 million EU citizens. The second equality concerns the differences of the region in Croatia. The EU has 28 members and 400 regions, and why shouldn't our regions take better advantage of eliminating developmental disparities as some of us did before, and lastly, as a Member, Croatia must be equal in making some decisions that are important to our people's lives - the defense of cohesion policy and the structural funds, where we have not achieved enough in the past five years.
Croatia has the right to use ten billion and six million euros, which is more than half of the Croatian state budget, but we are in the last place in contracted and disbursed funds, and could be sixth per capita. We have not used enough resources at our disposal, and it is not Brussels' fault", Picula emphasized, adding that there were several reasons for this because of a lack of strategies at the national level, political instability, referring on two governments in two years, but also a large number of local units of self-government, their undercapacity and their inability to "knock on the door" in Brussels and present the projects they will fight for.
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