The European Commission said on Friday that in 2010 Croatia had expressed readiness to discuss the issue of Croatian clients of the now defunct Ljubljanska Banka of Slovenia under the auspices of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, reiterating that it supported Croatia and Slovenia in finding a mutually acceptable solution to that bilateral issue.
Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele's spokesman Peter Stano said Croatia had confirmed that it was willing to continue negotiations on the matter under the auspices of the Bank for International Settlements. A decision to that effect was made in October 2010 during negotiations on the policy chapter Free Movement of Capital. After that, the then finance minister sent a letter to the BIS, Stano said, adding that the EC had no indications that that position had changed and that it continued to encourage both sides to find a mutually acceptable solution.
The BIS replied to the then finance minister Ivan Suker's letter very quickly and already in November 2010 said that it could not mediate in the dispute because it could not offer anything new in relation to the failed succession talks, conducted between June 2001 and September 2002.
The BIS said at the time that it could only offer the two sides its offices in Basel, where the governors of their central banks could hold meetings to find a solution.
The Slovenian news agency STA said the Slovenian ambassador to the EU on Friday expressed dissatisfaction with the European Commission's statement of Thursday which read that the issue of Ljubljanska Banka clients was a bilateral issue between Croatia and Slovenia.
Nevertheless, the EC reiterated on Friday that the issue was a bilateral one.
