March 2 (SeeNews) - Slovenia's government said it has approved a draft reply to a letter from the European Commission concerning the country's commitment to sell Nova Ljubljanska banka.
The government on Thursday authorised the finance minister to send the reply to the European Commission within the deadline, which expires on March 2, it said following its weekly session.
In its reply, in accordance with its positions to date, Slovenia responded to all of the main reservations and additional questions set out in the European Commission’s January letter. The country repeated all the main reasons for changing the commitments using additional arguments partly stemming from the most recent discussions with the Commission on February 26, the government noted.
"On this basis, Slovenia expects that the discussions, which will continue after the submission of the reply, will continue to unfold in a productive manner towards a possible agreement on a solution regarding a change to the commitments," it added.
In January, the European Commission said it has opened an in-depth investigation to assess whether new measures for the restructuring of NLB proposed by Slovenia sufficiently compensate for delaying the bank's sale beyond the end of 2017.
The partial sale of Slovenia's shares in NLB is a key commitment to ensure NLB's long-term viability, on the basis of which the Commission was able to approve significant state aid to NLB in December 2013.
In a separate release issued on Thursday, the finance ministry said the EC is expected to make its final decision on NLB following the examination of Slovenia's response and any comments from third parties, and no later than 18 months after the in-depth investigation procedure was launched.
In May 2017, Slovenia requested a gradual sale of its shares in NLB in two tranches, which the Commission approved. However, after putting the sale of NLB on hold in June, Slovenia had not completed the sale of a first tranche of its shares in NLB by the end of 2017.
Slovenia has argued that it needed to halt the sales procedure because of "the excessive impact on price caused by the issue of transferred foreign currency deposits in Croatia". Namely, NLB was taken to court in Croatia over Yugoslav-era savings deposits, which were repaid to the bank's former customers in Croatia by the two Croatian banks.