Finance Minister Andrej Bajuk met in Ljubljana on Wednesday Portuguese counterpart Fernando Teixeira dos Santos for talks on Slovenia's presidency over the EU's Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) in the first half of 2008, the Finance Ministry said.
Teixeira dos Santos acquainted the Slovenian delegation with the situation regarding topis covered by ECOFIN and pointed out the issues to which Slovenian presidency should pay particular attention from the aspect of development planning.
The finance ministers focused on Slovenia's priority dossiers, in particular the interim review of the Lisbon Strategy, which is one of the top priorities of Slovenia's EU presidency.
Within the ECOFIN, the EU finance ministers are to discuss guidelines for economic policies for the 2008-2010 period, which are a part of integrated guidelines on the basis of which EU member states prepare their national reform programmes.
In the area of financial services, the officials pointed out the draft directive on solvency margin of insurance companies. One of the key open questions is the competences of supervisors, division of powers and guarantee schemes, in which Slovenian presidency would try to find a compromise acceptable to all EU countries.
During its EU presidency, Slovenia is also to deal with long-term issues related to solution of financial crises and short-term responses to the current turbulence on financial markets caused by the US sub-prime market crisis.
Regarding taxes, Slovenia is to continue work on key dossiers such as the new system of reduced VAT rates, draft directive on VAT on financial and insurance services, fight against tax fraud and draft amendments to the directive on horizontal excise duties.
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