Reconstructing the Intractable: The Croatia-Slovenia Border Dispute and Its Implications for EU Enlargement
Reconstructing the Intractable: The Croatia-Slovenia Border Dispute and Its Implications for EU Enlargement

Summary/Abstract: This study seeks to reconstruct two crucial phases in the management of the protracted territorial conflict between Croatia and Slovenia over the common State border: (i) The causal mechanisms of the genesis of the Arbitration Agreement during the Croatian accession negotiations with the EU 2008/2009, and (ii) the conflict dynamics during the subsequent arbitration procedure before the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) 2012-2017. The method employed is process tracing based on elite interviews (politicians and civil servants) and informal documents. The arbitral award from 29 June 2017 is the end of a formal process, but not of the substantive dispute. Bilateral conflict between an EU Member State (Slovenia) and a Candidate Country (Croatia at the time) creates de facto add-on political conditionality. The Croatia- Slovenia case has profound implications on the SFRY successor States and EU enlargement in the Western Balkans.

• Details
• Contents