Eurozone Chief Hopes Slovenia Will Get Stable Govt Soon
The pair made the comments as they arrived at meeting of eurozone finance ministers after Alenka Bratušek formally handed her resignation earlier today following a defeat at the party leadership election at the end of April.
Noting that things like that are nothing out of the ordinary in democracy, Schäuble would not comment on Slovenia's internal political developments but he did say that the country was on the right path, and would soon have a good government again.
He noted that only a year ago everyone was saying that Slovenia needed a bailout, while the Slovenian government insisted it did not. "And it was right. We supported it at this too," the German minister said.
"Slovenia is economically speaking not one of the strongest countries at the moment so I hope that very soon there will be a stable government again and that they will push forward on the reform path that Slovenia has been pursuing," Dijsselbloem said when asked whether he was concerned about the political instability in Slovenia.
"I'm always worried about political instability in any country because whenever the government is changed, whenever there are elections time is lost and important work has to be done, also in Slovenia, on the banks, on the structure of the economy, becoming more competitive, getting back on track," he said.
The Eurogroup discussed excessive macroeconomic imbalances in Slovenia and Italy as one of the issues on the agenda today based on the European Commission's March report, which also found excessive imbalances in Croatia.
Addressing reporters after the meeting, Dijsselbloem said that Slovenia and Italy needed to further step up the effort to tackle the imbalances, and that the countries' ministers were well aware of that.
He said that the Eurogroup hailed both countries' commitment to maintaining the momentum.
Slovenia was the only EU member state to receive the second consecutive warning for excessive macroeconomic imbalances from Brussels in March with the Commission called for timely correction of the country's excessive government deficit.
At the time, European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Olli Rehn urged the country to intensify work on privatisation, continue with other economic reforms and restore the sustainability of its public finances.