EU Arbitration Tribunal – Hague
Photo: Famagusta Gazette

Global arbitration court in The Hague June 29th handed Slovenia victory in a long-standing maritime dispute with Croatia, granting it direct access to worldwide waters in the Adriatic Sea. In their reportedly convoluted 300-page judgement, judges ruled Slovenia should have “a junction area” with global waters, allowing “freedom of communication” to all ships, civilian and military, seeking access to Slovenia. The tribunal had awarded three quarters of the Bay of Piran to Slovenia, evidently ignoring the fact that Croatia had in 2015 withdrawn participation in the border dispute arbitration after a phone-tapping scandal which brought to light improper dealings evidencing disturbing lack of impartiality in the case by a Slovenian judge sitting on the court’s panel of judges. The Croatian newspaper “Vecernji” leaked tapped phone calls where Jernej Sekolec, the Slovenian representative to the EU-backed arbitration panel, spoke with Simona Drenik, Ljubljana’s intermediary dealing with the case, about tactics that would secure a favourable ruling for Slovenia. In 2009, the two former Yugoslav states agreed to a deal wherein the five-member tribunal would reach a binding decision on five square miles (13 square kilometres) of mostly uninhabited land and coastline, including Piran Bay on the northern Adriatic Sea. Both countries were asked to propose one member for the panel and a key element of impartiality was that no member discusses the tribunal’s work with their government. Slovenia breached the impartiality agreement and rule and still gets to win the case!

Who said justice was blind? Well, in this case it’s blindness pertains to ignoring corruptness within.

But then, who would expect anything else with Carl Bildt (notorious for his evident indifference to ethnic cleansing of Croats and Bosniacs during the 1990’s war of Serb-aggression in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the co-chair of the 1995 Dayton Agreement that fortified the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina into a relentless ethnic battleground even during peace time), co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, saying the international community “is likely to overwhelmingly endorse [the] arbitration conclusion on [the] Croat-Slovene dispute”.

In Ljubljana, Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar Friday 30 June 2017 hailed the ruling as a “historic moment for Slovenia”, saying the judgement “is definitive and must be applied on both countries, Slovenia and Croatia”.

Ahead of the ruling, Croatian authorities and opposition said they would consider the court’s decision to be “a dead letter on paper” and that another way to solve the dispute should be sought, “in a peaceful and sober manner”.

Croatia insists the matter is not resolved and wants to continue bilateral talks. “Croatia’s view is known,” said Andrej Plenkovic, Croatian prime minister, before the ruling. “We quit the arbitration, since for us it is irrevocably contaminated and compromised.”

“Today’s arbitration decision for Croatia is a decision which is not obliging us in any way…. nor do we intend to implement its content,” Plenkovic told reporters after the arbitration court’s decision was made public.

Photo: Wikimedia

“With respect to the arbitral award rendered today in the arbitration process that Croatia withdrew from because of unlawful acts of Slovenia, the Government of the Republic of Croatia states the following:

1. Today’s arbitral award does not in any way bind Croatia and Croatia shall not implement it.

2. Croatia has made its position towards this arbitration unequivocally clear already in July 2015, immediately after the scandalous and unlawful actions of Slovenia’s Agent in the case and a Member of the Arbitral Tribunal were publicly disclosed. Their actions remain without precedent in international jurisprudence. They constitute systematic and grave violation of the most fundamental principles in international dispute settlement, most notably principles of party equality and independence and impartiality. Such acts of Slovenia represent a material breach of the Arbitration Agreement to Croatia’s detriment. The fact that the Member of the Arbitral Tribunal, appointed by Slovenia, and Slovenia’s Agent in the case resigned immediately are indicative of the gravity of unlawful actions. This was confirmed by the prompt resignation from the position of the Member of the Arbitral Tribunal of the then President of the International Court of Justice who was appointed as replacement by Slovenia.

3. To protect its rights, pursuant to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and on the basis of a unanimous decision of the Croatian Parliament of 29 July 2015, Croatia initiated the procedure of termination of the Arbitration Agreement, ceased to apply it and withdrew from the arbitration.

4. Croatia particularly emphasizes that, in protection of principles and values of international law and peaceful settlement of disputes which it has always upheld and promoted, it does not accept the results of this obviously compromised arbitration process.

5. Since this arbitration failed in bringing about a final resolution of the open border issue, Croatia now repeats its invitation to Slovenia to launch dialogue, convinced that two neighboring states, NATO and EU members, must have enough motive and willingness to resolve this issue by mutual agreement.

6. Croatia expects that Slovenia will not take any unilateral acts that would in any way change the current state of affairs along the common state border.

7. Croatia invites all other states and international organizations to continue treating this open border issue as a purely bilateral matter which concerns only Croatia and Slovenia.”

Obviously, the dispute has highlighted a legacy of hasty partitions of few territorial patches of disputed borders, while keeping the bulk of internationally recognized borders, left behind by the disintegration of former Yugoslavia and the Serb-led war of aggression of the 1990s, during which the sudden dissolution of Yugoslavia, propelled by the plight to secede from communist Yugoslavia and establish democracy, spiraled into bloody and destructive conflict where Croatia found itself forced to defend itself and its people’s self-preservation. Ina Vukic