"Slovenia has about EUR 3.1bn at its disposal between 2014 and 2020, but the situation is very bad at the moment, we believe it's catastrophic," said Suzana Lep Šimenko of the opposition Democrats (SDS), which demanded that parliament discuss the issue.

She added that Slovenia so far got only 10% of what is available to it in this financial perspective and the country needs to get better at using the funds it is eligible to.

Bandelli agreed that Slovenia needed to become more effective. He said that the main problem was the IT system Slovenia has been using. In 2016 the system was deemed useless by the Court of Audit.

The minister said a revision of the system would be launched because "it cannot be that a computer system is holding back the development of our country".

He expressed support for the proposition, adopted unanimously by the committee, that the ministry should draw up in 30 days a plan to improve drawing of cohesion funds phasing in 30 days.

The government's Cohesion Policy Office has so far allocated EUR 2.105bn out of EUR 3.068bn available to Slovenia between 2014 and 2020.

Public calls for bids have already been completed for the bulk of the funds and projects have been launched, said Bandelli, who underlined that Slovenia would phase all of the funds available to it by the end of the financial perspective.