Slovenia and Croatia have to bilaterally implement the ruling and demarcate the border on-site. For this to happen, Croatia will have to stop rejecting the award and engage in dialogue.

Following a decision of the parliamentary Foreign Policy Committee that the government should continue dialogue on the implementation with Croatia, PM Miro Cerar is expected to invite his Croatian counterpart Andrej Plenković for talks soon.

Cerar was scheduled to visit Zagreb in September, but decided against the visit after Plenković said in his address to the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly that the arbitration tribunal's decision on the border between Croatia and Slovenia was an example of how international law was being undermined.

While the Slovenian government has drafted plans for all possible scenarios, it hopes that Croatia will be willing to agree on the implementation of the award in talks.

The border on the sea, which gave Slovenia over 81% of the Bay of Piran, is final, but the two countries still have to demarcate the land border and enter it into records with coordinates.

The Slovenian Surveying and Mapping Authority has drawn 48 maps: the first is a generalisation of the entire Slovenia-Croatian border, the second, with a scale of 1:76,000, depicts the border on the sea, and the rest the land border with a scale of 1:25,000.

The maps published on the government website will serve as the technical basis, but the two countries can adapt the border to better suit the actual situation on site. According to unofficial information, the government is already blueprinting proposals for making the border more practical.

Once the implementation process begins, it is expected to take years for the border stones to be placed along the around 650 kilometres of the border and for the coordinates to be entered into all the records as is the case with the borders between Slovenia, and Austria, Hungary and Italy, experts believe.

The border between Slovenia and Croatia has been determined by the Hague-based arbitration tribunal, which was set up under the 2009 arbitration treaty signed by Slovenia and Croatia, and announced the award on 29 June.

The tribunal based its decision on several foundations. In more than 90% it followed harmonised Slovenian and Croatian cadastral limits, in some cases it based its ruling on topographic items such as roads or rivers, and in others on either Slovenian or Croatian arguments presented to the tribunal.

It has given the two countries six months to prepare for its implementation. After the deadline expires, Slovenia will decide on how to use the maps for its needs, according to an unofficial government source.