NEWS
Prime Minister Alenka Bratušek after extraordinary session of the European heads of state: "Slovenia for peaceful resolution of dispute"
The Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia, Alenka Bratušek, attended an extraordinary session of the European heads of state and Government, where they discussed the current situation in Ukraine. Before the working lunch they held a meeting with the Prime Minister of Ukraine, Arsenij Jaceniuk. In her statement to the press after the meeting, the Prime Minister emphasized that Slovenia is committed to a peaceful resolution of dispute and added that the political dialogue should start as soon as possible, since all other scenarios might be considerably more painful for everyone.
Today, the European leaders expressed their support to territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and adopted measures to support the Ukrainian Government, in particular, the financial sector. In connection with sanctions against Russia, they decided to implement three step sanctions. The first step, which was already confirmed at the today's session, was an immediate freeze on negotiations on visa liberalization and the new EU–Russia Agreement. The EU leaders underlined that the second step, which also included economic measures and cancellation of the EU–Russia Summit, would follow in case Russia did not respond to the calls to diplomatic resolution of dispute with Ukraine. In case Russia aggravated the situation, a new agreement between European heads of state and Government would be needed to adopt these and other sanctions against Russia.
In her statement, Ms Bratušek also touched on the issue of publication of the in-depth reviews of the European Commission on macroeconomic imbalances saying that the document of the day before was as expected. She explained: "Many measures we envisaged in the adopted budgets for 2014 and 2015, while some have not been fully implemented yet. It is our task that these measures, which we have already envisaged, with the property tax as one of them, we implement and carry through."