The European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) is expected to decide next Wednesday whether Slovenia's lawsuit against Croatia regarding the receivables of defunct Ljubljanska Banka's (LB) Zagreb branch dating back to the 1980s meets the court's required admissibility criteria.

The Slovenian news agency STA said on Thursday that the ECHR Grand Chamber “will release a ruling on admissibility of a case brought by Slovenia against Croatia over the defunct bank Ljubljanska Banka (LB) on 16 December.”

The decision, which has been already made, will be published in writing, the court and Slovenia’s state attorney said on Thursday, according to the STA.

This suit was filed on 15 September 2016 after the court in Strasbourg had already ruled that it had no jurisdiction to hear a similar case filed against Croatia by Ljubljanska Banka itself. Slovenia decided to sue Croatia after the ECHR, in 2015, declared Ljubljanska Banka’s case against Croatia inadmissible because the bank was government-controlled.

Presenting Slovenia’s case, the government’s high representative on succession issues, Ana Polak Petric, said in 2016 that over the past 30 years Ljubljanska Banka’s Zagreb branch, despite the numerous proceedings brought in Croatian courts, had been unable to collect receivables dating back to the 1980s. The receivables mainly refer to corporate loans. Slovenia claims it was defrauded of EUR 429.5 million.

Slovenia insists that this was the first opportunity for it to present the court with documents on the damage caused to Ljubljanska Banka in Croatia. This refers to 48 cases or individual procedures that Ljubljanska Banka filed in the past with Croatian courts.

Croatia believes that Slovenia’s suit has no grounds and that it is not in the remit of the ECHR.

Slovenia insists that through their “systematic and arbitrary acts”, Croatia’s judicial and executive authorities denied the former bank its right to exercise its property rights, which amounts to the violation of the European rule of law stemming from the European Convention on Human Rights, says the STA.