Upon his arrival at today’s session, Mr Janša noted that this was already the third day of negotiations for the EU leaders on the issue of the EU budget and the recovery fund. “This is the third time in my political career that I am negotiating here, and it really is more a matter of negotiation than harmonisation,” said the prime minister, adding that the discussions are significantly more political that they were in the past. “Unfortunately, there are many digressions into political party topics, which prevents us from focusing on the key issues. In spite of this, there has been some progress,” said the Slovenian prime minister, highlighting that many issues have been hashed out during the talks.

“I expect that we will move forward from political topics to crunching the numbers, which is key if we want to ensure that Europe recovers from the pandemic as quickly as possible and that it uses the funds from its seven-year budget framework to achieve all the goals we set in the development programmes and in the European Commission’s plan,” explained Prime Minister Janez Janša.

“There is always hope, and we still have a good chance of reaching an agreement. However, there is a less desirable option still open where we take a longer break, but after which I fear that our positions will not be much closer together than they are now. This is why I strongly support continuing negotiations and harmonisations until a successful agreement is reached,” concluded Mr Janša.