"I'm certain Slovenia has the ambition to become even better in this aspect," said Cretu, who met the Slovenian minister to discuss opportunities for improvement and plans for the coming multi-year budget.

Smrekolj said Cretu had promised help in making sure that Slovenia receives a notice about being 100% effective in drawing EU funds in the latest budget.

In this budget period, Slovenia "has already approved almost EUR 2bn, and we believe we'll again be successful by 2023, the deadline for drawing all funds".

The commissioner, who is in Slovenia for the Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T) congress, also expressed hope that the 2021-2027 budget would help improve the lives of Europeans.

Cretu added that she was happy that many countries had already expressed willingness to increase funding for the budget. And the Slovenian minister expressed expectation that the cohesion funding would not change much.