After the talks in Luxembourg, Minister Erjavec declined to tell the press about the contents of his conversation with Fuele, and only described their meeting as constructive.

Fuele's spokesman Peter Stano only said that the talks covered a wide range of topics from the jurisdiction of the Enlargement Commissioner.

Last week, the Slovenian foreign ministry reported that Ljubljana had acceded to Zagreb's proposal that the two countries should together approach the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel in an attempt to find a solution to the problems surrounding the now-defunct Ljubljanska bank.

With such a proposal, Slovenia and Croatia "finally confirm the position" that the Ljubljanska Banka issue was the result of "the break-up of the former joint state" and that it should therefore be "dealt with as part of the succession", Erjavec said in his letter to his Croatian counterpart Vesna Pusic on that occasion.

Slovenia also insists that Croatia withdraw the power of attorney to two Croatian commercial banks in a lawsuit against Ljubljanska Banka,

The European Commission finds the Ljubljanska bank issue to be a bilateral matter unrelated to the process of the Union's enlargement. Brussels encourages Croatia and Slovenia to solve this issue which can also have multilateral implications owing to the involvement of other countries-successors to the former Yugoslavia.

The Commission firmly believes that all 27 EU member states will ratify the Croatia-EU treaty in time to enable this newcomer to join the Union on 1 July 2013.

The Croatian minister Vesna Pusic is hopeful that the two experts appointed by the governments of their two respective countries will find a "constructive and implementable" proposal to resolve the issue and she has ruled out, for the time being, the withdrawal of the government's power of attorney in the lawsuit.