Croatia and Slovenia will send a letter together to BIS in Basel

At the meeting in the Strmol Palace on 5 July, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Vesna Pusić and her Slovenian counterpart Karl Erjavec...

At the meeting in the Strmol Palace on 5 July, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Vesna Pusić and her Slovenian counterpart Karl Erjavec harmonized the content of the joint letter to request support from the Bank for International Settlements in Basel in their further negotiations on the transferred foreign-currency savings with Ljubljanska Banka.

„To this end Minister Erjavec and I have signed the joint letter to BIS in which we request that this problem may begin to be resolved under its auspices. We have also agreed that if additional explanations are necessary, our financial experts will be at their disposal“, said Minister Pusić.

Minister Pusić said that Croatia stood by the Memorandum and would continue to do so. „The Memorandum of Understanding mentions the stay of court proceedings and not the withdrawal of the lawsuits, and we did not discuss that. We have agreed on the stay of the proceedings as mentioned in the Memorandum“, said the Minister. She added that the Memorandum only concerned the transferred savings, and this is a problem in Croatia. The question of other forms of savings, such as the non-transferred savings, is a separate question whose settlement is not related to the Memorandum. „We agree that it is necessary to discuss this matter, too“, said the Minister.

Minister Erjavec said that the position of Slovenian side was that the lawsuits against Ljubljanska Banka before Croatian courts should "remain dormant until the definite settlement". In regard of the succession, he said that he sent a letter to the other Successor States to the former Yugoslavia in which he appealed to them to settle as many issues resulting from the disintegration of the former SFRY as possible on the basis of Annex C to the Agreement on Succession to the SFRY signed in Vienna in 2001 and ratified by all the Successor States, finding that it is the only document providing for the methods to settle the problems remaining after the disintegration of the former joint state.

At the question of the possibility for New Ljubljanska Banka to appear on the Croatian market, Minister Pusić responded that in accordance with the rules of the European Union, from 1 July on, any bank from the European Union may freely open a branch.

Slovenian Minister congratulated Croatia on its accession to full membership of the European Union, and expressed his satisfaction with the fact that the Croatian Minister came to visit Slovenia only a few days after that.

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