Croatia, Slovenia Leaders To Discuss Gulf Dispute

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and his Slovenian counterpart, Miro Cerar, meeting in New York for the UN General Assembly session, agreed to meet again in Zagreb on September 27 to discuss the dispute over the territorial waters between Croatia and Slovenia in the Piran Gulf.

In June, after the Permanent Court of Arbitration awarded a portion of the gulf to Slovenia, Zagreb rejected the verdict and called for bilateral talks to solve the matter.

 The border isue "must be the central topic of the talks and I want to talk about implementation [of the cout ruling]," Cerar told Slovenian radio STA on Wednesday, ruling out a special bilateral deal on the border.

Slovenia insists that, as an EU member state, Croatia has no choice but to obey the court ruling.

The dispute between Croatia and Slovenia over the maritime waters on the Istrian peninsula dates back to the break-up of Yugoslavia. It resulted in Slovenia temporarily blocking Croatia's EU accession talks in December 2008.

Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor and Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor signed an agreement on arbitration in November 2009. The arbitration process started in The Hague in June 2014.

The European Commission in 2015 said there was "no sustainable alternative to the arbitration procedure" over the disputed waters.

However, Croatia's parliament in July 2015 backed a government decision to abandon the arbitration process.

This came after the media revealed that secret, unauthorised conversations had taken place between a judge at the court and the Slovene representative to the court.

The arbitration process has since continued without the presence of Croatia.