Slovenië wil aanpassingen EU-plan grensgeschil (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn i on Tuesday (19 May) confirmed he had received Slovenia's response to his latest proposal aimed at solving the long-standing border dispute between Croatia and Slovenia, saying he would meet the two countries' foreign ministers in the coming weeks to discuss amendments submitted by Ljubljana.
"I just received the [Slovenian] response personally," Mr Rehn said at a press conference in Brussels.
"I will study and analyse this response in detail shortly. We need the two countries to agree. The commission is only a facilitator," he added.
The enlargement commissioner intervened in the 18-year-old border dispute between Croatia and Slovenia after it reached a new low in December when Slovenia blocked several chapters of Croatia's EU membership negotiations over the issue.
Mr Rehn consequently proposed setting up a meditation mechanism to help break the deadlock, with the last version of his proposal suggesting that the countries should solve their dispute via a five-member international arbitration tribunal that would operate in line with international law – a point Croatia has been strongly pushing for.
Zagreb accepted the proposal earlier this month, but the response presented by Slovenia on Tuesday includes a number of amendments to it.
Details of the amendments have not been made public, but they are said to include the so-called principle of fairness Slovenia had been insisting on - Ex aequo et bono, Latin for "from equity and conscience".
In a legal context, the term refers to the encouragement of arbitrators to look beyond purely juridical arguments and consider solely what they consider to be fair and equitable in the case at hand.
Ljubljana was also unhappy that the commission proposal required that it lift the veto to the EU talks with Croatia as soon as the two countries agree to the arbitration, saying it could only do so after any form of agreement has been formally ratified by the two countries.
Slovenia has made it clear that if its amendments are not taken into account, it could neither accept the proposal nor unblock Croatia's EU negotiations.
"If alterations demanded by Slovenia are not accepted, the arbitrage deal will not be reached. If the agreement fails, there is no way that Slovenia will be forced to unblock Croatian accession talks," Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor i told Slovenian POP TV earlier this month.
Mr Rehn will be meeting the two countries' foreign ministers "in the coming weeks" to discuss the amended proposal with them, but a concrete date has not been set yet.
Also speaking to journalists on Tuesday, Swedish foreign minister Carld Bildt, whose country will take over the EU's rotating presidency on 1 July, said he was not particularly optimistic the saga would end soon.
"Fifteen years of experience of dealing with your part of the world [the Balkans] has taught me never to use the word 'optimist' or the word 'pessimist.' You have to deal with the situation as it is," Mr Bildt said, referring to his time serving as High Representative in Bosnia, as EU special envoy to the former Yugoslavia, and as UN special envoy to the Balkans.