The PM arrived at the EU summit on Thursday with an intention of persuading her colleagues that the state-owed banks NLB and NKBM, which have been included in asset quality reviews currently conducted at eight Slovenian banks, should not be made to repeat stress tests as part of the EU-wide bank reviews scheduled for next year. She also made it a point of saying that Slovenia wants the same criteria for both reviews.

The European Central Bank (ECB) has said that Slovenia's NLB, NKBM and SID export and development bank will be included in the comprehensive review of 130 systemic banks in the euro zone. Under EU guidance stress tests are currently being conducted at NLB, NKBM, Abanka Vipa, Banka Celje, Gorenjska banka, Unicredit banka Slovenija, Hypo Alpe Adria Bank and Raiffeisen banka.

Arriving for the second day of proceedings at the summit of EU leaders in Brussels, Bratušek said that Slovenia would be included in the EU-wide reviews next year because "one of our banks has so far not been included in these procedures so far, that is SID Bank, where I absolutely don't expect any problems."

In releasing the list of banks that will be included in the stress tests at the European level, the ECB explained that bank reviews conducted at the national level could not replace the banks' cooperation in a comprehensive EU-wide review, which meant the three Slovenian banks could not be exempted, but that data obtained from the ongoing stress tests and asset quality reviews would be taken into account.

The ECB president would not comment on his meeting with Bratušek, but ECB sources repeated last night that the results of the national reviews would be taken into account in the EU-wide review, which is likely to make the review cheaper and easier for Slovenian banks.

The sources also underscored that the EU-wide review would be mandatory for all systemic banks in the euro zone, including those in Spain, Ireland and Slovenia that are already being reviewed at the national level. The terms of the European review have not been determined yet so they cannot be compared to those in the Slovenian review at this point.

ECB sources moreover said that they could not project at this point what will happen with Slovenian banks. "The banking sector is obviously not very healthy, but we'll see. We don't know the figures yet. We don't know whether the money available to fix banking problems will be sufficient," the sources said.