Agreed minutes

The agreed minutes (Engl. Agreed minutes ) is a document of the European Union in the framework of relations between the Community and a third country is used.

The EU recommends the form of the agreed minutes instead of a simple exchange of letters in common matters with third countries, provided that a common text could be agreed and there is no official proposal neither from one party nor an obligation to accept it from the other party, or if it is not desired, to uncover from which side the initiative came. In such minutes, the phrase "The representatives of the Community have agreed ..." is usually used . By means of an agreed record, repetitions in systems (e.g. customs tariff lists) can be avoided and the risk of errors or deviations can be kept to a minimum. (Manual of Precedents, VI 1.5, footnote 1)

Agreed minutes with Croatia

As part of Slovenia's concerns about the establishment of an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the Adriatic, a meeting of the Adriatic Trilaterals (Slovenia, Croatia, Italy) took place on June 4, 2004. In the agreed minutes it was stipulated that Croatia will refrain from activating the exclusive ecological and fisheries law zone ( ZERP ) on European citizens and legal persons, as long as this is not regulated in the fisheries law negotiations within the framework of the accession negotiations. In return, Croatia was promised to start accession negotiations. Croatia wishes to fully activate the exclusive fishing zone by January 1st, 2008, since a serious deterioration in the fish stocks could be observed in the entire Adriatic as early as 2007. Croatia would therefore like to have a regulated influence on illegal fishing. In particular, the Croatian Farmers' Party , which is expected to participate in the new Croatian government after the parliamentary elections in November 2007, insists that Croatia's exclusive economic zone in the Adriatic should also be applied to EU citizens.

However, Slovenia regards this exclusive economic zone as a unilateral prejudice of the borders with this state and threatens to freeze certain negotiating chapters. However, according to international law provisions of the Convention on the Law of the Sea , Croatia is authorized to do so. Croatian international law experts also criticize the Slovenian behavior on this issue, since in this case it is not a matter of prejudicing the borders. The Convention on the Law of the Sea regards any body of water within the twelve-mile zone as territorial waters. (The waters of Slovenia do not go beyond the twelve-mile zone.) It is therefore a dispute over territorial waters and not over the waters affected by the exclusive economic zone. The agreed minutes are not compatible with international law. In addition, a differentiated and unjust approach to Croatia is criticized, since Slovenia itself had already declared an exclusive economic zone in 2005, contrary to the provisions of the Convention on the Law of the Sea. The Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs denies that the minutes are binding. The European Commission has already voiced fierce criticism. For more information on the dispute on the law of the sea between Croatia and Slovenia, see International Conflicts of the Successor States of Yugoslavia .