Slovenian president Borut Pahor warned Croatia on Thursday during the trilateral meeting between presidents of Croatia, Slovenia, and Austria, on the problems in the implementation of the arbitration border ruling in the Gulf of Piran in the northern Adriatic.

The shores of Gulf of Piran, or Piran bay, are shared between the two countries, and the sea border between them is disputed.
Pahor asked the Croatian president, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, to warn the Croatian government that shellfish farms off the shore of the Istrian town of Umag have spread across the borderline delineated by the arbitration court ruling reached in June 2017.

Slovenia accepts the border ruling and considers its decision to be the definition of the new border.

Croatia, on the other hand, does not recognise the ruling, having withdrawn from the process in 2015 because of a scandal which involved leaked tapes showing Slovenian government official discussing the case with the court’s judge.

Grabar-Kitarovic said she was not familiar with that particular issue, but that she was confident that relations between the two countries should not be defined by outstanding issues, but rather by their European future.

She added that Croatia could not accept the outcome of the border arbitration process since it had been compromised.

Despite walking out of the arbitration process, Croatia said it was still open to talks on the dispute in a bilateral format.

Earlier this month, the European Commission refused to take a stance on the matter, opting to remain a neutral observer.

Slovenia is formally free to file a case against Croatia for refusing to implement the ruling at the Court of Justice of the EU in Luxembourg, and the Slovenian government announced it would go forward with the lawsuit after the new government is formed.

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