Slovenia on Friday officially blocked the closing of the policy chapter Freedom of Movement for Workers in Croatia's EU accession talks, explaining that in that chapter, too, Croatia had submitted documents prejudging the Croatian-Slovene border.

This raises the number of chapters the opening or closing of which has been blocked to 14, diplomatic sources said.

At today's meeting of the Council of the EU's task force for enlargement, Slovenia was the only member-country that withheld its consent for the closing of the chapter Freedom of Movement for Workers.

Slovene officials said the reason for such a decision was that in its documents submitted to the European Commission Croatia was referring to the Act on the Office of Notary Public, which in turn was referring to the Act on Towns and Municipalities and its list of towns and municipalities in Croatia, including four border villages in Istria which Slovenia holds to be disputable.

A source in the Swedish EU Presidency said that despite the blockade, Croatia was continuing with the reforms within the accession process, a fact that was taken note of at the meeting of the enlargement task force.

Slovenia is currently blocking the opening of nine policy chapters and the closing of five. Earlier this month, Croatia submitted to the EC benchmarks for the closing of talks on four chapters, and soon work is expected to be completed on one more chapter.

This means that work on 10 chapters will be completed soon, to which one should add seven more chapters that have been formally closed, which is almost entirely in line with the EC's indicative road map envisaging the completion of accession talks with Croatia by the end of the year.

By making a decision on the privatisation and restructuring of state-owned shipyards, Croatia has met benchmarks for the opening of the chapter Competition, and they are now being verified by the EC.

Of the chapters that have not been opened yet, there remains the chapter Judiciary and Fundamental Rights, which is being blocked by several countries over the assessment that Croatia's cooperation with the Hague tribunal is not complete.

Freedom of movement for workers is one of the so-called Four Freedoms on which the EU market is based, the other three freedoms referring to the movement of goods, services and capital.

As in the case of 12 Central and Eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007, transitional periods for this policy chapter have been agreed for Croatia as well, which means that EU member-countries will be able to restrict access to their markets for workers from Croatia for a maximum period of seven years from the country's admission to the bloc.

Each member-country can use that right if its provides arguments proving that the influx of workers from Croatia would disrupt relations on its labour market.