Brussels - The European Commission recommends to all EU countries, including Slovenia, to diversify their imports of fossil fuels and reduce their dependency on fossil fuels by increasing the use of renewable sources of energy and by strengthening the electricity distribution networks, in its European Semester Spring review released on Monday.

The Commission says that Slovenia could strengthen the use of renewables through simplifying licencing procedures.

Slovenia is also recommended to improve the implementation of energy efficiency measures, foremost in construction and in transport sector electrification.

Energy efficiency could also be improved with a sufficient energy infrastructure capacity and with interconnections between networks.

The Commission moreover recommends increasing public investment in the green and digital transition and in energy security.

To achieve this goal, Slovenia can use the resilience and recovery facility, the REPowerEU plan to end dependence on Russian fossil fuels and other European funds.

Slovenia should also ensure that the growth of current expenditure financed from national budgets is in line with the overall neutrality of fiscal policy, which means that increased expenditure should be offset by increased revenue.

However, this should not be done to affect households and businesses that are the most vulnerable to energy price hikes or deny assistance to refugees from Ukraine. The countries should be prepared to adjust current expenditure to current developments, the Commission says.

Brussels also recommends long-term fiscal sustainability of the country's health and long-term care systems.

It urges Slovenia to implement the post-Covid national recovery and resilience plan and send to Brussels its cohesion policy programme documents for 2021-2027.

As sources at the EU told the STA, Slovenia's recovery and resilience plan contains multiple reforms and is very comprehensive, which prompted the Commission to not make any other recommendations than those that were made for all member states.

The Commission has prepared its recommendations on the basis of stability and reform programmes it has received from EU member states.

It, however, also released a report on compliance with European budgetary rules for 18 member states, including Slovenia.

The report identifies Slovenia as one of the 17 states that do not meet the general government deficit criterion of being below 3% of a country's GDP, although a clause is currently in place to temporarily allow derogation.

Slovenia has been receiving calls from Brussels over the past years to reform its healthcare, long-term care and pension systems.

Last year, it was urged to pay particular attention to the structure of public finances and the quality of budgetary measures.