The PanSlovenian Shareholders' Association (VZMD), already for some time warned of the extremely unequal adjudication, to which investors in shares and subordinate bonds of Slovenian banks were exposed, when on 18 December of last year they were, upon the country's capital increase in three banks expropriated without replacement and deleted from the register without any legal opportunities of complaint. In conflict with the assertions of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia (RS) and the Bank of Slovenia (BS), as if to say that the measure was unavoidable and that the European Commission (EC) already from 1 August 2013 had demanded from every approval of state aid to banks, the PanSlovenian Shareholders' Association had until that time already many times warned, that the EC did not demand from the Republic of Austria that kind of measure, in the approval of state aid to Hypo bank (the case arose quite a lot of interest at the presentation of the President of the PanSlovenian Shareholders' Association at the Annual conference of the International network of law firms, the International Financial Litigation Network (IFLN), in May in New York).

And so as is, in the abovementioned case – now new cases are emerging (!) - Slovenia put in it its request for the approval of state aid for NLB on 7 January 2013, while Austria did the same for Hypo Bank on 29 June 2013; Slovenia finally defined the final applied aid amount on 9 December 2013, while Austria did the same on 27 August 2013; in both cases aid was announced before 1 August 2013, while the final amount of aid was defined after 1. August 2013. Nevertheless the EC approved state aid to Austria without intervention into the subordinate bonds of Hypo, while from Slovenia it, as the correspondence released by  Dnevnik and Mladina uncovers, demanded the commitment to the deletion of all subordinate bonds of NLB without replacement, all the way back from the beginning of September 2013 of NLB, and only upon the receipt of this commitment, approved state aid to that bank on 18 December 2013.

»This, in the interests of (the citizens) the Republic of Slovenia, is necessary to decisively oppose,« the President of the PanSlovenian Shareholders' Association once again warned the Governor of the Bank of Slovenia, at the International Conference of the International Monetary Fund and the National Bank of Poland, last week in Warsaw (in the photograph on the left), as he also already did already many times before that the, at that time, Prime Minister of Slovenia, mag. Alenka Bratušek and the minister, Dr. Metod Dragonja – in May at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) forum in Paris (in the photograph on the bottom right).

The report of the results of stress tests, which were released a few days ago by the ECB, explicitly expressed, that with regard to the described inequitable treatment of Slovenia in comparison with Austria, that this was not only a reflection of some kind of personal sympathy or antipathy of some Brussels bureaucrat, but an example of the treatment of Slovenia as an inferior member of the Union that can be seen in more instances also in comparison with other members. How can one otherwise explain the fact, that the ECB upon the implementation of the stress tests of Slovenian banks for 2014 took the forecasts, which were completely incompatible with reality and with respect to all discussed indicators that were explicitly worse than their actual, last known values?!

Regarding the consequences of unequal adjudication of the Republic of Slovenia, in contrast with its vital interests, the President of the PanSlovenian Shareholders' Association also warned the European Parliament in March.

The most basic scenario, which may be the most plausible, is that the ECB so presumed, that this year's change in GDP in Slovenia would be the second worst in the euro sector, even though the latest data shows, that it to be the second best! That the negative stress test forecasts were the most unrealistic in Slovenia, is witnessed by the fact in regard to deviation between the last revision of the capital suitability of banks and the forecast suitability for the end of 2016 upon the unpleasant scenario: The ECB forecast for banks in Slovenia by far the greatest fall in capital suitability and respectively by 15 percentage points, followed by banks in Greece with 10 and in Cyprus with a fall of 9 percentage points; the ECB forecast banks in Portugal a fall of only 6, in Italy 5 and in Spain by only 2 percentage points!

With the exception of Slovenia, the ECB in all other countries, where movements are actually better than expectations from the beginning of the year (Greece, Cyprus, Spain), agreed to the use of fresh data (»dynamic« valuation), while only in Slovenia, where the improvements were the greatest, remained with the use of out-of-date, »static« and decisively more pessimistic assumptions, which consequently led to the worst and most unrealistic and pessimistic forecasts. Did it therefore act with a reason? Perhaps in the context of the sale of state acquired Slovenian banks and because this would be enough, that NLB and NKBM would once again find themselves on the »black list«, the Bank of Slovenia did not provide useful »proof« for its assertions, as if to say that last year's capital increase was not an overuse of taxpayer's money and that banks cannot pay off expropriated investors, as they need every euro of current capital?

The PanSlovenian Shareholders' Association therefore appealed to the ECB and the BS, that they clarify, which of them is responsible for the inequitable and completely unrealistic »static« balance sheet valuation of NLB and NKBM: did the ECB reject the suggestion of the BS for the use of fresh data, or did the BS »forget« to suggest this?!?

The report of the ECB in regard to the stress tests also uncovers a new specific example, where a foreign bank has been subject to a considerably more favourable proceeding than that, as the BS claims, is the only possible and also only correct one. The Italian bank Monte dei Paschi, for which the Republic of Italy declared state aid in June 2013 and the completed plan in November 2013 (therefore already after 1. August 2013), on 27 November 2013 received permission from the EC (europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-1174_en.htm), and also in regard to this the EC did not make the permission for state aid conditional with the deletion of subordinate bonds, as the balance sheet of Monte dei Paschi as at 30 June 2014 showed 3.3 billion euros in issued subordinate bonds. And still, in the report on the result of stress tests the ECB also uncovered, that Monte dei Paschi during this year executed the discounted purchase or exchange of its own subordinate bonds, although that measure alone did not suffice for the fulfilment of the capital adequacy of the bank and the stress test showed, that it now needs further fresh capital.

A similar situation exists in the Bank of Celje, which just as Monte dei Paschi has positive capital, however under the quotient demands of capital adequacy. However, when the Bank of Celje during the spring of this year suggested to the BS, that it would improve this adequacy with the discounted purchase or exchange of its own subordinate bonds, the Bank of Slovenia categorically forbade the Bank of Celje to do this, as if to say that this is not allowed, as without additional measures this will not suffice for the fulfilment of the capital adequacy of the bank. Because this also did not suffice in the Monte dei Paschi bank, the  Italian Central Bank and the EC – likewise during the spring of this year(!) – despite this allowed that measure, an incensed mag. Kristjan Verbič asks himself: »Its all to do with extreme rigidity and »strictness« of the BS to yet another local bank (Bank of Celje) perhaps also for hidden motives – it all has to do with something of a legitimate suspicion of »those things forgotten« and probably the intentionally left out use of fresh, strong showing valuations of indicators of Slovenia with respect to the stress tests in relation to the two largest local banks NLB and NKBM – perhaps in the context of the sale under "whatever are possible" difficult conditions?!«

Otherwise in relation to the actual problems of the Bank of Celje, the president of the PanSlovenian Shareholders' Association, mag. Kristjan Verbič, also in the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia, during the October session of the Committee on Finance and Monetary Policy, upon the adjudication of the proposal for a temporary suspension of the individual articles of the contested amendment to the Banking Act (Banking Act 1L), in the discussion warned, that the Government of the Republic of Slovenia's own argument for a non-temporarysuspension of the contested  Banking Act 1L was copied word for word from that, which the previous government wrote in December of last year, although the banking system from then on was thoroughly renovated and expressed outrage above all at the copied burden, that is perhaps the consequences of this law to "get rid of the constitutional appeal" and "so that it would not come to difficult-to-fix consequences", and highlighted, that is »a completely unnecessary expropriation, despite the economic damage and amount of distress, which has also already led to suicides, therefore it is necessary upon all the lies and stupid acts of the representatives of the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Slovenia and the BS to face the facts, that it is a matter of long term and irreparable consequences,« and added, that »the authors of the  arguments for the non-temporary suspension of the contested individual articles of the Banking Act 1L – besides the substituted name of the Minister – exactly those officials, for which the media recently exposed, already in the beginning of September last year – by email - negotiated, that the capital of NLB, d.d. will be, at the end of September 2013 negative (!!), that they will change the law in such a way, and that a fictitious calculation be made so as to demand the removal of all holders of subordinate bonds without replacement«. The released correspondence clearly shows, that the hereinunder officials of the Ministry of Finance thoroughly understood the inconsistency with the Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia and International banking law, and they pushed it through the law making procedure of the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia, with false execution and inevitability, legality, promises of transparency, etc., which the PanSlovenian Shareholders' Association already warned, that »it is actually a matter of national treason, for which the consequences will be borne by a greater number of the future generation«.