If there is no agreement with Croatia, Slovenia reportedly has another plan.
Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar will invite Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković to resume their border dialogue this week, writes the Delo daily from Ljubljana, quoting sources close to the Slovenian government, reports Jutarnji List on October 17, 2017.
Cerar’s invitation will be based on the last week’s conclusion of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Policy, which supported the government’s activities on the implementation of the border arbitration verdict and granted Cerar the authority to continue dialogue with Croatia.
Delo reports that the relations between Ljubljana and Zagreb have been frozen after Plenković’s speech at the United Nations in September, in which he reiterated the Croatian position to refuse the implementation of the arbitration verdict. After the speech, Cerar cancelled his planned visit to Zagreb. They met only informally during a recent European summit in Estonia, where they talked for about half an hour.
At that meeting, Plenković told Cerar that Croatia’s goal was to achieve a better understanding of the position of both parties through dialogue. Still, Slovenia’s view is that any meeting can only discuss the implementation of the arbitrators’ decision.
Yesterday’s decision by the Slovenian government to publish the “visualisation” of the border between the two countries, maps which had been prepared by the Slovenian Geodetic Authority based on the arbitral tribunal’s verdict, is a sign that Slovenia is “speeding up the implementation of the arbitration decision,” says Delo.
According to the Slovenian Television, the arbitration tribunal in its verdict clearly defined the boundary coordinates at sea, where until now the border was not determined, so in Slovenia’s view, that it is the definitive solution and Slovenia should get 81 percent of the area of the Bay of Piran.
On the other hand, the arbitration tribunal did not set the land border coordinates, since it mainly adhered to the principle of delimitation on the basis of cadastral data, which is why the land boundaries on the maps published by the Slovenian Geodetic Authority are provisional since they need to be harmonised with Croatia.
According to the international law and the verdict of the arbitration tribunal, that can only be done by a bilateral agreement between the two sides. Technical negotiations on harmonisation could take several years. If the agreement with Croatia on the implementation of the decision is not possible, Slovenia will use the provisional maps from the Geodetic Authority.
Translated from Jutarnji List.
