The European Union will continue to push for a compromise solution to the obscure border row between Slovenia and Croatia which has belatedly stymied Croatia's bid to join the EU, dpa quoted the bloc's enlargement commissioner as saying today. "We are so close to an agreement that it makes no sense to give up since we have almost reached the goal. What matters is an agreement between both countries," Olli Rehn told journalists in Brussels. The row concerns the exact location of the maritime border between the neighbours. Croatia insists that the border be drawn down the middle of the Bay of Piran, but Slovenia says that this would cut it off completely from international waters, and insists that it be given more than half the bay. Rehn was speaking after Slovenia, which joined the EU in 2004, effectively dismissed his proposal to solve the border dispute by international arbitration, and meanwhile press ahead with Croatia's EU accession. Slovenia asked for amendments which Croatia flatly rejected. Rehn said that he had not yet received Ljubljana's official response, but that he and the experts of the European Commission - the EU's executive - would "study it carefully." And while Rehn had initially said that his compromise proposal was a "last offer" from Brussels, he said Friday that he expected "further meetings to take place in the future" on the issue.
