Satisfaction and jumping to conclusions is not warranted, but there is probably more space now for an acceptable compromise.

The Commission insists Slovenia must honour the commitment to sell three-quarters of the bank, but it is reportedly willing to discuss stretching out the procedure, perhaps out of consideration for the coming election.

For starters, a small and acceptable investor would be brought in just before the deadline for the sale. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is reportedly offering itself as a saviour.

This would probably render unnecessary the second, more exotic proposal that Slovenia has made to the Commission: the bank paying the state EUR 360m as a compensatory measure.

There is no need to sell NLB, which is a bank fundamentally in the national interest, to a foreign fund on the cheap.

But one would nevertheless expect that the government would not gamble with the fate of the country's largest bank. Every last-minute "solution" has its price, one that taxpayers are likely to foot, the paper concludes.