With Slovenia on the verge of securing a nominally balanced budget, Moscovici acknowledged that the general budget situation had improved, but added that the improvement as regards the nominal deficit could mostly be seen as a result of the favourable economic environment.

Asked why the Commission lowered the fiscal effort target, the commissioner said it had taken into account Slovenia's remarks related to calculating the country's output gap and to the need to balance fiscal adjustment with support to recovery.

He suggested that the 0.6% target, which corresponds to that envisaged by the government in line with its methodology, is fairer and was picked to prevent the Commission's output gap approach being seen as a punishment.

Meanwhile, commenting on the Commission's decision to also subject Slovenia to another in-depth analysis of macroeconomic imbalances, Moscovici repeated that there had been improvements but that the situation needed to be examined again.

Some of the Commission's views were echoed today by the Slovenian Fiscal Council, which however disagrees with the Commission's stance that Slovenia's economy is already overheating this year.

"The current and the projected economic growth are not causing major macroeconomic imbalances," wrote the council, which is an independent body tasked with monitoring government spending in line with the principles of the fiscal rule enshrined in the Constitution.

It said that the diverging estimates of the government and the Commission were the result of different assumptions and macroeconomic forecasts.

"These, however, indicate that an additional improvement of the economic circumstances would render a raising of the demanded fiscal effort from the current minimum of 0.6% to at least 1% of GDP a year increasingly justified," the council wrote.

The Finance Ministry responded by labelling the Commission's assessment expected and in line with last year's, it however insisted that speeding up the fiscal consolidation could undermine economic growth.

"Slovenia is persisting on the planned path of a gradual elimination of the structural deficit, which we assess to be in line with EU and national fiscal rules while simultaneously supporting efforts to preserve balanced economic growth," the ministry wrote, stressing the fiscal effort had been persistently around 1 GDP percentage point since 2015.

It moreover pointed out that the Commission's assessment was preliminary, with the final assessment often being very different, and that Belgian, Italy, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Portugal and Romania also did not follow the targets demanded by the Commission.