During the talks, State Secretary Andrej Ster expressed the expectation that Croatia would comply with European standards and that the pace of dealing with this issue would be in accordance with announcements made by top Croatian government officials in their contacts with Slovene officials, a Slovene Foreign Ministry statement said.
Nobilo was invited for talks to explain his statement to a Croatian newspaper, which appears to have been seen in Slovenia as an indication that the issue of giving Slovene citizens free access to the Croatian real estate market will not be resolved for some time to come.
In the last two days Slovene media have devoted a lot of attention to Nobilo's statement to Jutarnji List daily on Sunday about a possible dispute between Zagreb and Ljubljana over the issue, tying it to Slovene Prime Minister Janez Jansa's statement in Brussels some ten days ago that Croatian citizens were buying property in Slovenia while Slovene citizens were not allowed to do the same in Croatia.
Nobilo told Jutarnji List that the information that Croatian citizens could freely purchase real estate in Slovenia was not true, citing cases of four people who had tried to do so but failed.
Slovene media, citing the Slovene Justice Ministry which was dealing with the cases, reported on Monday that three such applications by Croatian citizens had been dealt with, that some were still being processed, and that none of the applications had been turned down, suggesting that the principle of reciprocity had been established and that Croatia should make it possible for Slovene nationals to buy Croatian real estate freely.
According to Slovene media reports, Slovene nationals are mainly interested in legally regulating the issue of the property they bought in Croatia in recent years, but could not register in land registers over the lack of reciprocity.