Cooperation between Slovenia, Croatia and Italy in protecting the Adriatic Sea is "at its highest level in history," the foreign ministers of Croatia and Slovenia, Gordan Grlic-Radman and Anze Logar said at the Bled Strategic Forum, Croatian state agency Hina reported on Thursday.

Logar and Grlic-Radman participated in a panel discussion on cooperation in the Adriatic, which was originally to have been attended online also by Italy’s Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio.

Hina did not report whether Di Maio attended the meeting.

“The Adriatic Sea obliges us to cooperate,” said Grlic-Radman addressing the panel discussion and adding that the three countries were working to connect ports in the northern Adriatic and care for the blue economy and environmental protection.

Logar said that the three countries had shown that they could cooperate on something “common and very valuable” and that that cooperation had been raised to a completely new level.

The Exclusive Economic Zone is a good way to preserve the Adriatic, however, the Trilateral is even more important, Logar said, referring to cooperation between the three countries.

“If anyone pollutes the sea, it will be polluted for all three countries,” said Logar. “We need to cooperate and find a way to preserve that ecosystem,” he added.

The three countries signed two declarations in December last year and April this year related to protecting the Adriatic and the two documents envisage, among other things, defining and protecting bio-zones in the Adriatic and preserving the sea in general.

After the panel discussion, Grlic-Radman and Logar left for Brdo pri Kranju where they will attend an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.