Croatia, Slovenia Meet to Tackle Border Dispute

After months of rows and cancelled meetings, Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar is visiting Zagreb on Tuesday to meet his Croatian counterpart Andrej Plenkovic in the hope of moving forwards towards a resolution of the territorial dispute between the two states.

Relations with Slovenia deteriorated in June this year when the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in favour of Slovenia over the territorial dispute about waters in the Piran Gulf.

The Croatian government maintained the position of the previous administration in Zagreb, which was to claim that the arbitration process was compromised.

In July 2015, Croatia revealed recordings of unauthorised phone conversations between Jernej Sekolec, the Slovenian judge on the court, and Simona Drenik, the representative of the Slovenian government.

Ahead of the meeting in Zagreb, Cerar met leaders of his coalition partners in Ljubljana on Monday.

While some coalition members expressed a lack of optimism that the meeting will end the dispute, Karl Erjavec, president of the Democratic Pensioners' Party and Slovenia's vice-prime minister, said that he hopes that Cerar will not sign any bilateral agreement.

"I hope our prime minister will not sign or accept any obligations because we have bad experiences with Croatian politics. We can't even start talking about a bilateral agreement because it would mean that we would give up the arbitration [decision]," Erjavec said.

He concluded that Cerar should inform Plenkovic about measures Slovenia will take if Croatia does not conform to the decision by December 29, the deadline for its implementation.

Erjavec previously announced a plan to sue Croatia before the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg due to its decision not...