Slovenian PM accuses Croatia of ‘outrageous’ interference

Slovenian Prime Minister Marjan Šarec accused Croatia of "outrageous" behavior, alleging Zagreb tried to suppress a media report that Croatian spies helped scupper efforts to end a border dispute.

“It’s outrageous that Croatia tried to influence one of our media not to publish … this interference of the Croatian secret service,” Šarec told POLITICO in an interview in Brussels on Wednesday.

Šarec was referring to reports in Slovenian media this week that increased tension between the two neighboring EU members in the long-running dispute over their mutual border.

The dispute was meant to be settled by arbitration but Croatia declared in 2015 it was withdrawing from that process after leaked recordings showed a Slovenian official had been in contact with the Slovenian judge on the panel.

In recent days, Slovenian media reported that Croatian spies were responsible for the recordings — and that a person acting for the government in Zagreb sought to apply pressure to suppress those reports. That prompted Slovenia to convene its national security council and recall its ambassador to Croatia for consultations.

"Of course we won’t start a conflict with Croatia" — Marjan Šarec

Šarec said he was more troubled by what he described as Croatia's efforts to interfere with media freedom in Slovenia than he was by the alleged role of Croatian intelligence in the recordings.

“We would like ... Croatia to stop with these bad practices. It’s not European practice, it’s interference in freedom of media," he said.

"It’s not friendly. We know that every intelligence service in the world is doing its job, it’s normal. But it’s not normal to try to interfere in freedom of media, freedom of press."

Zagreb has denied it tried to squash the media report.

“The Croatian government neither has any possibilities or ambitions, nor it is our policy, to affect any publication in the Slovenian media," Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said Tuesday. "Croatia wants to develop a good relationship with Slovenia, our approach is the policy of dialogue.”

Asked if he would discuss the issue with his Croatian counterpart, Šarec noted he would see Plenković at the European Council summit on Brexit on Wednesday evening and again at a meeting of 16 Central and Eastern European leaders with China's premier on Thursday. "We will say some words, of course," he said.

In 2017, the arbitration court found in favor of Slovenia but Croatia has refused to implement the judgment.

"Of course we won’t start a conflict with Croatia," Šarec said. "We just want Croatia to obey the rule of law, that we as soon as possible implement this arbitration judgment … And the second point is that they stop with these bad practices.”

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