Croatian and Slovenian Foreign Ministers Vesna Pusic and Karl Erjavec were meeting in the Slovenian town of Otocec ob Krki on Wednesday to discuss ways of settling a dispute over the now defunct Slovenian bank Ljubljanska Banka (LB).
The talks started at 1400 hours and had not finished by 1930 hours. The two ministers were joined by the financial experts appointed by their respective governments, Croatian Zdravko Rogic and Slovenian France Arhar.
This was the fifth meeting of the two experts after they had taken stock of the LB dispute and the bank's debt to Croatian clients regarding the savings they had transferred from LB subsidiaries in Croatia to Croatian banks in the early 1990s and who were later compensated by the Croatian state.
According to the Croatian National Bank (HNB), the so-called transferred savings totalled some 545 million German marks, and the Croatian government provided Zagrebacka Banka and Privredna Banka Zagreb with power of attorney for lawsuits against the LB for the coverage of that sum.
The non-transferred savings totalled approximately 312 million German marks, and in this case Croatian citizens are conducting legal actions on their own. Rogic and Arhar said that they would not tackle this matter as those were private lawsuits. As for the non-transferred savings, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on 6 November 2012 that the Republic of Slovenia was liable for the payback of "old" foreign-currency savings to clients of Ljubljanska Banka outside Slovenia. That judgment is not final as the parties have three months to file an appeal with the ECHR Grand Chamber.
Pusic said on Monday there were three or four possible ways to resolve the LB issue.
The LB dispute holds back the ratification of Croatia's Treaty of Accession with the European Union in the Slovenian parliament.
