The FNI issued a report on current situation in the Adriatic regarding the Croatian Protected Ecological and Fishing Zone (ZERP) and possible reasons why do Slovenia and Italy oppose it despite the fact the ZERP is in accordance to International Law of the Sea. The author is Davor Vidas, a Croatian expert on the Law of the Sea, he´s working at the Norwegian FNI as a Programme director in some fields, among them the Law of the Sea.

Allow me to quote some parts from the report:

3.4 Croatia's Zone as an expression of unilateralism
Although avoiding the direct use of the notion of an EEZ, and instead drawing nominally on the recent practice of two EU countries (Spain and France) in the Mediterranean Sea, as well as expressly opening opportunities for additional arrangements with the states concerned and allowing a period of one year of postponed implementation of the Zone, Croatia's decision was met with strong criticism from the neighbouring Adriatic Sea countries, Italy and Slovenia. The keyword of that criticism was that
Croatia's decision was a `unilateral' measure. That label could hardly be understood to imply criticism of the unilateral proclamation of an EEZ in its technical legal meaning, because how else (bilaterally? multilaterally?) could one declare an EEZ?

Also, the content of the Zone was strictly within the confines of the LOS Convention - and thus based on a multilaterally agreed framework to which all the states concerned were parties. The label of unilateralism was thus a political one, implying that Croatia, due to its decision on the Zone, was not viewed as sufficiently cooperative. That its decision was regarded as `unilateral' was swiftly echoed by some leading European policy-makers and soon by documents adopted by EU bodies. On the other hand, it was difficult to deny that Croatia's proclamation of the Zone was indeed in accordance with international law. For instance, when meeting the Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan immediately after Croatia's proclamation, EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, spoke of the recent `unilateral decision by Croatia' on the Zone, yet added that its legitimacy under international law was not in question. In a similar vein, a document adopted thereafter by the European Council `noted with regret that the Croatian Parliament decided to declare a protected ecological and fishing zone in the Adriatic Sea without appropriate dialogue and co-ordination with the other countries concerned', yet went on to state that this was noted `without prejudice to sovereign rights of States deriving from the relevant international law'. In other words, while attributed the mark of unilateralism, Croatia's proclaimed Zone in the Adriatic Sea had to be, hesitantly or not, accepted as a legal fact.

The report states that Croatia has the right to proclaim the ZERP, a kind of EEZ.

Ever since Croatia proclaimed the Zone in 2003, Slovenia argued that this decision `prejudices the border at sea' between the two countries and `encroaches on the area in which [Slovenia] exercises
its sovereignty and sovereign rights'. The key question is, therefore, whether the Zone proclaimed by Croatia falls, in any of its parts, within the area where Slovenia exercises sovereignty or sovereign rights - or may exercise these in accordance with international law.

Now we come to the real problem - Slovenia said that ZERP would prejudice the maritime border and that´s the main reason why they block Croatia-EU negotiations.

And here the reason why Slovenian claims about Croatia prejudicing the border line are nonsense:

The law of the sea is unambiguous on the right of a coastal state to establish the breadth of its territorial sea up to a limit not exceeding 12 nautical miles (nm). The 12-nm breadth is to be measured from baselines determined in accordance with the LOS Convention.

Currently, the distance of the Slovenian coast, and any related baseline, from the nearest point of the Croatian Zone (i.e., the nearest high seas, before the Zone was proclaimed in 2003) exceeds 12 nm. In fact, the distance is 15.5 nm as measured between Point 5 at sea and the nearest point on the Slovenian coast (Cape Madona, close to Piran; see Map 2 - see page 28 in the report).

Nevertheless, Slovenia argues that Point 5, which `marks the beginning of the high seas in the Adriatic', is `the point of Slovenia's territorial exit to the high seas'.

This should be the end of discussion regarding Slovenian access to the high seas.

The key obstacle to the resolution of this north Adriatic Croatian/Slovenian `Rubik's cube' puzzle lies in the mixing, within a single set of solutions, of maritime delimitation between the two countries on the one hand, and Slovenia's legitimate concern for as unimpeded an access to the high seas as possible, on the other. If the problem remains confined to one set of solutions only, that can lead to no solution at all. It is important to realize that maritime delimitation between Slovenia and Croatia is one issue to be solved, while Slovenia's access to the high seas is yet another one, and is only partly related. Just like access to the sea by land-locked states, also access, or `exit', to the high seas by a geographically disadvantaged coastal state is not a function of (maritime) delimitation only.
As observed by the UN Secretary-General:
UNCLOS was not negotiated to correct geographical circumstances. To compensate partially for the latter, the Convention provides adequate remedies for situations where States are at a disadvantage.

...

Placing the entire issue of the Zone in the context of Croatia's accession process for EU membership facilitated an outcome that would certainly have been more difficult to achieve without having a `convincing' issue to relate to, such as an unresolved territorial delimitation dispute. Whether that was the main reason for opposing the Croatian Zone, or an optimal justification to put forth, remains to be seen.

And now we come to the Italian position:

In public statements, Italian politicians have related the prospects of a Croatian Zone to the negative economic effects this might have on Italian
fisheries in the Adriatic Sea; however, the political implications have been mentioned as well. According to reports, the Italian State Secretary responsible for fisheries, Paolo Scarpa, has stated that Italian fishers, who currently fish in the Adriatic Sea in high seas waters up to the limits of the territorial seas of other countries, would be denied such access should limits of zones of sovereign rights be introduced in the middle of the Adriatic Sea.

So if Slovenia is "doing the dirty job" for somebody, it is clearly Italian fishing lobby.

Worth quoting is also this part which refers to the Yugoslav-Italian delimitation treaty of 1968 (couldn´t find any link on the internet):

There are two key substantive facts in this context, as related to the 1968 Agreement. One is that the delimitation under the 1968 Agreement was
mostly based on equidistance - the median line. And the other is that the method of equidistance was modified through mutual concession, to give reduced effect to several islands situated significantly far offshore (and thus not following the general trend of the coastline) - and due to that, Italy, in total, actually received a sizeable concession through the
1968 Agreement, as compared to what would have been the case with a strict application of the median line. Some authors have estimated the total size of the concession in Italy's favour at 2,664 square km.139
Although the exact surface area of that concession may still need to be determined precisely, there is no doubt that, as observed by Scovazzi, the 1968 Agreement `provides for a boundary line which is more favourable to Italy with respect to what would result from the application of a strict equidistance method'.

Italians claim they have been disadvantaged by that treaty, which is denied here.

In sum, there may be many complex reasons - not only economic and political, but in the current situation also legal - for Italy to prefer the status quo in the Adriatic Sea. It might have been all too tempting to present the issue of the Croatia's Zone as an Adriatic `East Side Story' - yet another `Balkan niggle', as The Economist put it - where two small
countries, Croatia and Slovenia, were shown as involved in a fierce but basically irrational dispute over a small area of sea. Although their maritime delimitation dispute is a real and unresolved one, we have seen in the preceding section that there is no basis in international law for relating that delimitation dispute to the Zone proclaimed by Croatia.

In fact, the implications of the Croatian Zone for the longitudinal Adriatic maritime delimitation with Italy, while essentially a bilateral issue - and entirely beyond a territorial one - may represent the single most serious impediment to the application of that Zone to the EU Member States. An agreement on the substance of the rights of the neighbouring `EU Member States' in that Zone presupposes the need for entering into negotiations between Croatia and Italy on the limits of their respective zones in the Adriatic Sea.

This part clearly shows that Italy is interested to avoid proclamation of ZERP.

And the final sentences of this report state that there are only two ways in preventing Croatian ZERP:

To achieve that, only two avenues remain open. One is to change the current law of the sea, as codified in the LOS Convention - and that is hardly a feasible or desirable option, at least in the short run. The other is to persuade Croatia, a country that became renowned primarily due to its well-preserved Adriatic coastal and maritime area, not to use its rights based on the LOS Convention.
And that brings us back to the beginning of our story when, on 10 December 2007, the European Council opted to mark the 25th anniversary of the LOS Convention in a very special way.

Why did I post all this?

I wanted to ask you do you think it is ok that the EU denies Croatian membership by persuading it to give up it´s right to the ZERP, while stating that `The Union is founded on ... the rule of law' as the Treaty on European Union says or do you think that blocking Croatian negotiations because of ZERP is not in the "European spirit" and that the EU is thus unfair to Croatia?

PS: Sorry for a long post, and thank you for reading it.