Cerar’s Tactics on Arbitration Implementation Under Fire from Slovenian Media

On Friday, an oral hearing will take place in Brussels regarding Slovenia’s complaint to the European Commission that Croatia is violating European law by not implementing the arbitration decision on the border, but Slovenian media are skeptically writing about Prime Minister Miro Cerar’s unsuccessful tactics to impose a solution through European institutions that Croatia rejects due to the compromised arbitration process.

Neither does Slovenian diplomacy expect much from the first step that should lead to the implementation of that solution. At the hearing, which is of a technical nature, no concessions from Ljubljana or Zagreb are expected, nor any new mediation initiative from the European Commission, reports the Slovenian Press Agency STA.

>>> Plenković assessed that relations with Slovenia are not dramatic

The President of the EU Court in Luxembourg, Koen Lenaerts, has already warned in advance that the announced Slovenian lawsuit against Croatia regarding arbitration is the wrong path; such a lawsuit is undesirable in Europe, opposed by member states and European institutions, and is very risky for Slovenia, writes the leading Slovenian newspaper “Delo”.

In less than a year since the arbitration ruling was made, things have turned for Slovenia as Prime Minister Miro Cerar unnecessarily dramatized the arbitration ruling, which represented “moral satisfaction” for Ljubljana.

“Cerar has remained inactive in relation to Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković; he has failed to engage the European Commission more actively in the Croatian-Slovenian conflict. Slovenia has overlooked the fact that Brussels cannot and will not get involved politically, that it cannot and will not take a stance in a bilateral conflict,” states “Delo”.

>>> Cerar does not allow Croatia into Schengen without implementing arbitration

Everyone is tired of the dispute between the two states, which interpret it as the narcissism of small differences, so the international community does not treat Slovenia significantly differently from Croatia, regardless of its arguments, notes “Delo” in a commentary.

If Prime Minister Cerar uses arbitration on the border and open issues with Croatia as one of the arguments for the success of his government during its mandate in the upcoming campaign for the parliamentary elections on June 3, this could be, as Slovenian analysts assess, a double-edged sword considering that the opposition openly speaks of arbitration and its achievements as a foreign policy “fiasco” of Prime Minister Cerar and his Minister of Foreign Affairs Karl Erjavec.

Opposition portals thus also report Cerar’s statements about arbitration and the border issue from 2009 and 2010, when he, as a prominent lawyer with political ambitions, publicly opposed it, stating that it brings too many risks for Slovenia and that obtaining a territorial outlet to the open sea seems more likely if the blockage of Croatia’s EU accession negotiations continues.

>>> Cerar: The Slovenian government is open to dialogue when it makes sense

“Since Borut Pahor’s government was in such a hurry to sign the arbitration agreement, everything we do in the future will be far from a solution that would be optimal for Slovenia,” said Cerar in a discussion on Slovenian television, before the referendum in which Slovenian voters narrowly supported the Pahor – Kosor arbitration agreement, thus enabling the unblocking of Croatia’s accession negotiations, and criticized Pahor’s government for putting a question on the referendum that few voters understood, wanting, in Cerar’s opinion, to shift the responsibility for possible consequences onto them.

Before that, at the end of 2009, when the arbitration agreement was being signed, Cerar criticized Pahor in an interview with the Maribor “Večer”, saying that he entered negotiations with Croatia regarding arbitration with a “minimalist” negotiating position despite the advantages of EU membership.

>>> Cerar: Slovenia is for good neighborly relations, but will insist on its borders

“It is true that the arbitration agreement guarantees us contact with the open sea, but due to different interpretations, it is quite unclear what it will actually be,” Cerar said at that time in a conversation related to the signing of the arbitration agreement from which Croatia has since withdrawn due to the compromise of the process and proposed a bilateral solution.

Cerar argued at that time that for Slovenia, the eventual acquisition of a “harmless passage” to the open waters in the Adriatic, which is actually the essence of last year’s arbitration solution for Slovenia, is the “least favorable” option, and that the best solution would be a direct and “sufficiently wide” corridor through which Slovenia would directly access the open sea without passing through Croatian waters. However, the Croats will certainly contest this in the arbitration dispute, Cerar announced at that time, when he was a professor of constitutional law at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana.