Slovenia Does What it Accuses Croatia Of

The border is not the result of any agreement, but a one sided act from Slovenia, considers the editor of map publications at an institute.

As far as maps are concerned, Slovenia is doing exactly what they resented the Croatians for, and what the whole issue is about that ended up blocking the Croatian accession negotiations with the EU, says Mladen Klemencic, the editor of the lexicological and cartographic publications in the Croatian Miroslav Krleza institute.

“Prejudging the border between Slovenia and Croatia is in question, because it is not the result of any agreement, but a one sided act from the Slovenian parliament” said Klemencic. He was commenting the Slovenian border on the south-west of Slovenia, the sea section in the “Atlas Okolja” that is on the internet site of the Slovenian agency with the same name.

He says that the border on the map “cannot be drawn if it is not internationally agreed upon, or if it is shown – it would be the best to clearly state that a one sided opinion is in question, which applies to both sides, the Croatian and Slovenian”.

Nowhere in the world is there a such an example where the border is identical with the coastline

According to his words, the border shown in the mentioned atlas would “at first glace seem unusual” to somebody neutral.

“Nowhere in the world is there such an example where the border line is identical to the coastline, as is the case in the Piran Bay (Savudrija Bay), where the coastline belongs to two countries, and the Slovenian border runs along the Croatian coast” he said. He warned that “according to that map, anyone who enters the sea from Croatia automatically steps into Slovenia, which is absurd”.

He explains that had some sort of agreement on the border been reached, and that the responsible bodies ratified it, it would be natural to synchronize the maps with that.

“In this situation, however, the change to the maps means only that the Slovenian side is doing exactly what they loudly accuse and criticise Croatia for in Brussels” said Mladen Klemencic, the chief editor of the large world atlas that is published by the lexicological and cartographic institute Miroslav Krleza, which was issued in 2006.