Finance Minister Čufer will attend in Brussels on Monday meeting of the Eurogroup dedicated to the aid programmes for Greece, Ireland and Cyprus. Čufer will brief his counterparts on Slovenia's activities regarding the banks as the country gears up for the release of bank asset quality review results.
The results of the review are not expected before Thursday, which is why a detailed debate or any conclusions will not yet be possible in Monday's debate, an EU source explained for the STA last week.
The source would neither confirm nor deny media reports that the banks would need between EUR 4bn and EUR 5bn. The source assessed, however, that even if accurate, such figures would be easily manageable for Slovenia.
Various sources in Brussels have meanwhile emphatically denied speculations about potential extraordinary measures to accompany the announcement of the results of stress tests as those seen in Cyprus. "Such scenarios are certainly not realistic," a source close to the European Commission said.
Another source with the EU labelled such speculations as "extremely shocking" and exotic. "There is not a single reason to even start considering that. We are light years away from such a situation. Whoever writes about that is malicious, to say the least," the source said.
The implementation of ongoing aid programmes will meanwhile be in the centre of the Eurogroup meeting, which will be followed on Tuesday by a meeting of all EU finance ministers. Finance Ministry State Secretary Mitja Mavko will represent Slovenia at Tuesday's meeting, whose main topic will be the setting up of the banking union.
Source: SloveniaTimes
