Slovenia on Tuesday lodged an appeal against a European Court of Human Rights ruling which found three months ago that it must pay foreign currency savings in the now defunct Ljubljanska Banka's Sarajevo branch, the Slovenian government confirmed.
Slovenia opted for the appeal for legal reasons and inconclusiveness in the ruling which reopened some issues solved after the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, the Slovenian foreign and finance ministries said in a joint statement issued on the occasion of the appeal.
They said the ruling in a case of the bank's two former clients had serious political implications for cooperation in the Western Balkans, that it jeopardised the enforcement of the agreement on succession to the former Yugoslavia under which every successor state should pay former foreign currency savings under the territorial principle, and that the ruling erred in establishing facts because it said that those savings had probably ended up in Slovenia.
The ruling ordered Slovenia on November 6 to pay Emina Alisic and Aziza Sadzak 4,000 euros in damages plus court costs each, and to adopt measures within six months to pay damages in more than 8,000 similar cases.
If the ruling is upheld, it could be relevant also for the defunct Slovenian bank's former clients in Croatia.
