On Thursday 14 January 2010 at Ljubljana City Hall Mayor Zoran Janković officially received Stjepan Mesić, current President of the Republic of Croatia.

On this occasion, Croatian President Mesić signed the City of Ljubljana's Remembrance Book, while he and the Mayor of Ljubljana exchanged symbolic gifts.

Stjepan Mesić was born in Orahovica on 24 December 1934, is married and the father of two daughters. He graduated from Zagreb Faculty of Law in 1961. In his youth, he was politically active in the time of the Croatian Spring and spent a year in prison in Stara Gradiska (1970). In 1990 he joined the HDZ and became known in the broader political arena in the process of democratisation of the former Yugoslav republics, as well as being the last Federal President of the former Yugoslavia. In Croatia’s first democratic elections he was elected Speaker of the Parliament. Due to disagreement with HDZ policy (in terms of its attitude towards Bosnia and Herzegovina) he left the party and he and his supporters founded the HND. In 1997 he was among those whose initiative it was to set up the new HNS party and for some time he led the party in Zagreb. After the death of Franjo Tudjman in 2000, he was elected President of the Republic of Croatia for the first time and in 2005 he won a second term.

Newly elected Croatian president Ivo Josipović succeeds the current president Stjepan Mesić on 18 February 2010.