Advocating such a solution all along, "the ministry was one of the proponents of this solution at the level of EU", Minister Dejan Prešiček was quoted as saying in a release on Wednesday.

He stressed that "the proposal was also included in the 2014-2017 national culture programme, which was passed by parliament".

However, the new minister would also like Slovenia to have a zero VAT rate for printed books, which would also enable it to have a zero rate on e-books.

He noted that talks were still under way to reform the VAT system in the EU.

The solution the EU ministers sealed yesterday is a temporary measure as part of the bloc's efforts to modernise VAT for the digital economy to promote technological progress.

In addition to the two reduced VAT rates and a zero rate, it introduces a third, "super-reduced" rate of between 0% and 5%.

The ministry will now make an effort to change Slovenia's reserved official position on zero VAT and support the planned changes to the EU directive.

In EU talks over the past years, Slovenia had been in favour of equalising tax rates for physical and electronic books and papers, but had not supported the idea that a country could introduce "super-reduced" sales tax rates.

Electronic publications are currently taxed at a minimum of 15% because they are treated as electronic services.

In Slovenia, e-books and online papers are taxed at the standard VAT rate (22%), whereas their physical variants are taxed at the lower rate (9.5%).