The European Court decided unanimously that successors to the first two plaintiffs had legal grounds to continue the ongoing proceedings on their behalf and therefore decided to remove their motions from its case file.
The Court ruled that the two clients had been paid in full on 20 May 2005 in line with a ruling by the Osijek County Court following the sale of fixed assets of the Ljubljanska Banka branch in Osijek.
At a public auction in Osijek in late March 2004, the first fixed asset of Ljubljanska Banka was sold at a price of 3.9 million kuna, an amount which was to be used for the payment of claims of a part of Croatian clients.
As for the third plaintiff, the European Court ruled that for unknown reasons that person failed to take any legal steps in Croatia, although they probably would have been successful if they had been taken.
The three Croatian clients of Ljubljanska Banka had sued the bank with the European Court of Human Rights nine years ago because they could not recover their savings.
Some 140,000 Croatian depositors of the former bank claim around 150 million euros plus regular and penalty interest.
In 2001 Croatia joined in the proceedings on the side of the three clients.
Slovenia claimed, among other things, that the issue of foreign exchange savings was primarily a succession issue that was not under the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg court and that Ljubljanska Banka did not have control over its offices outside Slovenia.
The three clients and Croatia challenged this claim, stating that a constitutional law adopted by Slovenia in 1994 divided Ljubljanska Banka into two banks, with the new one taking over all the assets and the old one keeping only debts towards foreign clients. Since the matter was regulated by the country's constitution, the bank's clients did not have any legal means to challenge the law, as confirmed later by a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights.
The Strasbourg-based court ruled that the law directly affected the status of the depositors regarding their savings and that acts by Slovene authorities had generated and continued to generate effects outside Slovenia, which is why its responsibility could be considered.
The court eventually turned down Slovenia's objection that the Ljubljanska Banka issue was already being negotiated before the Bank for International Settlements and in arbitration proceedings before the International Monetary Fund. The Strasbourg court ruled that the three Croatian depositors were not parties to those negotiations and that the proceedings in question were not the same.
However, the fact that Ljubljanska Banka is negotiating the same problem with the Bank for International Settlements in Basel and in arbitration proceedings before the IMF has a different meaning. Those proceedings, in which neither Croatia nor its nationals can become involved and in which the announced value of compensation is 1.3 billion euros, have a decisive role in the survival of Ljubljanska Banka.
Stefica Staznik, Assistant Justice Minister who represents the Croatian government before the European Court of Human Rights, said that today's ruling did not solve the basic question of possible violation of the depositors' human rights.
"The ruling announced today does not solve the basic question which prompted the proceedings, namely whether the measures taken by Slovenia with the aim of protecting the property of Ljubljanska Banka violate the human rights of the depositors," reads a statement from the Justice Ministry's department for representation before the European Court of Human Rights.
Staznik underlined that Croatia would consider the possibility of submitting a motion requesting that the case be reconsidered before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, as well as that Croatia be allowed to take part in proceedings launched before the European Court of Human Rights by other depositors of Ljubljanska Banka.
"The depositors' claims are not imaginary, they are based on concrete civil law contracts signed between the bank and its clients, in which the Slovene government interfered in order to prevent the depositors from collecting their claims. Ljubljanska Banka offices were an integral part of the bank, which integrated them by itself into its own system because it was also interested in collecting foreign exchange outside Slovenia," the statement said.