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"The Commission was following our debate on the supplementary budget and feels that the structural fiscal effort is insufficient to meet their demands," Čufer said after the meeting.

European Economic and Monetary Policy Commissioner Olli Rehn came out of the talks by saying that the situation in Slovenia was serious but still manageable. He however added that "the clock is ticking".

"In particular there needs to be credible improvement of the record on bank sector repair. Quality is more important than speed when it comes to asset quality review and stress tests...We'll continue closely monitoring the implementation of recommendations to see if it is in track with European commitments and requirements," the commissioner added.

Slovenia was put on the agenda of today's meeting at the initiative of the European Commission under "miscellaneous", with Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem explaining that the group "discussed the state of play as regards asset quality review in stress tests to be conducted during this summer in Slovenian banks".

"We welcomed the intention of authorities to identify the real capital needs of the Slovenian banking sector and we agreed that the exercise should be conducted in close cooperation with the European Commission and the European Central Bank. We recalled that Slovenia is required effective action to correct its excessive deficit by October this year," Dijsselbloem said.

Meanwhile, Čufer explained that concrete measures were not discussed, while it was agreed that it will be reviewed once again with the European Commission what in fact is taken into account in Brussels when assessing fiscal effort. "And then we will see where we actually stand," he said.

"We explained that the measures that we adopted this year have only been in place since the second half of the year and that the figures actually only reveal half of the fiscal effort," the minister noted, while moreover stressing that there are also quite a few measures that will only enter into force on 1 January.

Asked whether this meant the need for a new supplementary budget, Čufer said that if necessary "additional measures will be adopted or also not - depending on what the joint analysis will show".

The minister confirmed before the meeting that the price of the pilot transfer of toxic assets from the NLB bank to Slovenia's bad bank remained the sticking point in talks with the European Commission.

He added that plans for the pilot transfer had not been abandoned. "The sticking point is that we are not of the same opinion on what is the right price and the cost of the transfer," he said as he arrived to the meeting.

The European Commission has demanded independent asset reviews at Slovenia's state-owned banks before an EU-approved transfer to the Bank Asset Management Corporation (BAMC), the bad bank, can begin. Slovenia wants to conduct the pilot transfer at market prices in order to avoid the wait related to the asset review.