Kroatië hervat besprekingen over lidmaatschap (en)
Croatia, hoping to be the European Union's next country to join the bloc, resumes membership negotiations on Friday (2 October).
The talks are being restarted now that a border dispute between the former Yugoslav nation and its neighbour and EU member state Slovenia is to be put to arbitration overseen by Brussels.
The 27-country bloc and Croatia are expected to open six new chapters of the 35 policy areas that are up for negotiation at an intergovernmental accession conference in the European capital.
It is also believed that an additional five may be closed on Friday as well.
If the results live up to diplomat expectations, Zagreb will have opened 28 chapters and closed 12 as of the end of the day.
The border row, which centred on Zagreb and Ljubljana's inability to to agree on their common land and sea border, had held up progress in Croatian membership talks since last year, although the dispute dates back a further 18 years to the start of the break-up of the Yugoslav federation in 1991.
Last December, Slovenia blocked Croatia's accession negotiations over the issue.
Rights to a patch of the Adriatic Sea close to the Slovenian city of Piran that Slovenia argues would secure its ships direct access to international waters has proved especially controversial.
In September, EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn had said he thought Croatia could complete its membership talks by mid-2010.
Now that the border dispute has been removed from the enlargement discussion, some of the thorniest issues are now likely to include the fight against corruption and crime.
Sweden, which currently holds the EU's six-month rotating presidency, is planning at least two more intergovernmental conferences before the end of the year.