Speaking to the press in Meise, Sanader said that if arbitration on the entire border was "a condition to go before an international judicial body, where we would finally close the Savudrija Bay issue, then why not, although I think that would be a luxury and a waste of time on something that has already been agreed".
In Meise, Sanader attended a summit of the European People's Party, traditionally held ahead of every EU summit, and met with his Slovene counterpart Janez Jansa, who also attended the event.
Jansa said Slovenia did not "link the settlement of bilateral issues to Croatia's European prospects. Quite the contrary, Slovenia supports Croatia on the road to the EU".
Jansa said the arbitration proposal was nothing new and that Ljubljana had already said that "in principle it is not against arbitration, which is better than a permanent conflict". He added, however, that "at first sight arbitration seems to be a magic formula," but inviting a third side to close bilateral issues was not the best solution.
Jansa said that "apart from a proposal in principle," Slovenia had not received from Croatia "any draft variant on what arbitration should look like". He reiterated that Slovenia found it unacceptable to put only the sea border to arbitration.
Jansa went on to say that it was not fair to link Croatia-EU negotiations on fisheries, which have not begun yet, to Zagreb-Ljubljana bilateral issues because fisheries were within the EU's jurisdiction.