Erjavec said that he did not believe that two-thirds of Slovenia's parliamentarians, required to ratify the treaty, would consent to a bilateral solution by which Slovenia would pay out more than 200 million euro to cover the cost of transferred savings in the now defunct bank which was located in Zagreb, as was recently reported in some Croatian media.

In the wake of the article appearing, Erjavec stated that that proposal would be unacceptable to Slovenia and that since then he had received numerous calls from Slovenia's citizens claiming that Slovenia was not obliged to pay, as it was not indebted to Croatia.

Asked whether this would deteriorate relations with Croatia and whether another blockade to Croatia's accession to the EU was possible, Erjavec said that Slovenia was not the one that was blocking Croatia but it was Croatia that was doing the blocking.

Croatia agreed to the plan of succession and it should withdraw its suit against the Ljubljanska Bank in Croatian courts so that the matter can be resolved within the framework of succession, he said.

Asked about possible pressure by other EU members that this matter should not impact the ratification of Croatia's accession treaty, Erjavec said that only the opinion of Slovenia's MPs are relevant in this case.

"If Croatia wishes to join the European Union, it must respect the obligations taken over in the Vienna agreement on succession which is still valid for Croatia too", he said.

He added that Slovenia was preparing itself intensively for the matter to be handed over to an arbitration court and that it would hand over its arguments concerning the border between Croatia and Slovenia by the deadline set for 11 February next year.