Slovenia's parliament is due to ratify Croatia's Treaty of Accession with the European Union on Tuesday, with Slovenia's state leadership and Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic and Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic being expected to attend this special session in Ljubljana.
This past Friday, Slovenian Prime Minister Alenka Bratusek said that the forthcoming accession of Croatia to the European Union would benefit Slovenia, and that she was pleased that Croatian PM Milanovic and Foreign Minister Pusic would attend the ceremony of ratification of Croatia's EU accession treaty in the Slovenian parliament on April 2.
"I am very pleased that Prime Minister Milanovic has accepted our invitation and I think that the forthcoming accession of Croatia to the EU will benefit not just Croatia but Slovenia as well," Bratusek told Slovenian Radio.
She said she was also very pleased that the two countries had reached an agreement on the Ljubljanska Banka issue, which paved the way for ratification of the Croatian accession treaty by Slovenia and made it possible for Croatia to become a member of the EU on July 1 as planned.
The long-standing dispute between Slovenia and Croatia over possible models to compensate customers of the now-defunct Ljubljanska Banka (LB), who had their deposits in LB branches in Croatia, had worsened with the decision of the cabinet of Janez Jansa, Bratusek''s predecessor, to make the ratification of the Croatia-EU treaty conditional on the settlement of the LB issue.
However, earlier this year, the two countries agreed to put the LB issue within the framework of succession to the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and to see to it that court suits by Croatian banks over transferred savings would be put on hold. After that, the Slovenian government immediately launched the parliamentary procedure to ratify Croatia's EU accession treaty.
In that regard, the two neighbouring countries also agreed that the negotiations would continue under the auspices of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel in keeping with the agreement on succession.
The Croatian government pledged to ensure that court proceedings that two Croatian banks (ZABA and PBZ) filed over transferred savings be adjourned, while the Slovenian government undertook to ensure that Ljubljanska Banka, as the defendant, agrees to the adjournment. In addition, Croatia will not initiate any new suits in this regard.
A memorandum to this effect was signed by the Slovenian outgoing premier Janez Jansa and Croatia's Milanovic on 11 March in Mokrice, Slovenia.
The European Commission, which has insisted, since the very beginning of the dispute, that bilateral issues must not hamper Croatia's accession to the Union, immediately welcomed the agreement reached by Ljubljana and Zagreb.
