Member states and the European Parliament can no longer change but only accept or reject this final list, which comes after coordination on a preliminary list that was opposed by Slovenia over containing a gas terminal in the north Adriatic.

Spatial Planning Minister Samo Omerzel said in July that this denoted the project in the Gulf of Trieste, which Slovenia has been opposing for environmental and socio-economic reasons.

While this meant that Slovenia could not nod to the original list, the Infrastructure and Spatial Planning Ministry explained last Friday that it had subsequently reached a compromise solution with Italy and the European Commission which says "Italy will only be able to to set the location of the terminal in agreement with Slovenia".

Prime Minister Alenka Bratušek said today that the list is "proof that Slovenia's arguments, backed with negative opinions of the civil society and last but not least also of the [Italian] Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, convinced the European Commission that the mentioned terminal is environmentally problematic".

She said that while Slovenia agreed that energy diversification in important, the decision on the location of the terminal needs to be weighed carefully and consider all environmental and other cross-border impacts.

Slovenia does not oppose a gas terminal in the north Adriatic and will continue talks with Italy and Croatia within the framework of of the task group for energy projects in the north Adriatic that was agreed at the trilateral meeting of Slovenian, Italian and Croatian government representatives in Venice on 12 September, the PM's office wrote.

The Commission's list of priority EU projects of common interest includes around 250 projects that will have easier access in 2014-2020 to a part of EUR 5.8bn in EU funds, among them seven Slovenian projects, worth a total of EUR 1.2bn.

The Slovenian projects are pipeline links towards Hungary (Kidričevo-Lendava), Croatia (Kalce-Jelšane), Italy (Šempeter-Vodice), electricity transmission links to Hungary (Cirkovce-Pince) and Italy (Okroglo-Udine), an upgrade of the 220 kV AC lines to 400 kV in the corridor Divača-Kleče-Beričevo-Podlog-Cirkovce and a new 500 kV underground cable between Italy's Salgareda and Divača.