International legal instruments for resolving the Slovenian-Croatian dispute in the Gulf of Piran region

Abstract

During the existence of Yugoslavia, there were no maritime boundaries between the federal republics that were part of the country. The implication of this decision was, after Slovenia and Croatia proclaimed independence in 1991, the outbreak of a dispute over the delimitation of the border on the strategically located Piran Bay. Different legal positions and extended argumentation on both sides mean that despite the existence of numerous international legal instruments for resolving the dispute, such as the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea or the International Court of Justice, and numerous attempts at dialogue between the interested states, the authorities in Ljubljana and Zagreb failed to reach an agreement. Therefore, in the third decade of the 21st century, in the center of Europe, between two member states of the European Union and NATO, there is still a border dispute.