The EU is entering the summer recess as anything but a union that has managed to at least provisionally sort out its biggest problems. On the contrary, the chasm between member states has widened in recent days, Dnevnik comments on Friday.

The government has assessed as positive a pilot project of accommodation of refugees who are unaccompanied minors in dormitories for secondary student in Nova Gorica and Postojna. It decided the project will continue in Postojna.

Defence Minister Andreja Katič expressed disappointment as the long-awaited defence legislation changes failed to be put on the agenda of the government session on Thursday. If the bills are not put on the agenda of the next session at the end of August, her Social Democrats (SD) will initiate the parliamentary procedure themselves.

The government debated on Thursday the indebtedness of Slovenian hospitals and decided to give the Health Ministry until the end of August to craft a package of measures to tackle debt that ministry calculations show will reach EUR 200m by the end of the year.

The government decided on Thursday to review all environmental permits issued to companies in the wake of three cases of fire in waste processing plants in less than three months. Eight task forces will be reviewing a total of around 1,000 environmental permits, Environment Minister Irena Majcen said after the government session.

Drago Šketa, the new state prosecutor general, has told the STA in an interview that he cooperates well with the justice minister and that he does not feel any pressure from the ministry as "prosecutors work independently". He added that he "will not allow any pressure on the work of state prosecutors."

Pharma company Krka, which released upbeat half-year results, dominated trading on the Ljubljana Stock Exchange on Thursday, accounting for EUR 1.39m of EUR 1.9m in total turnover. While Krka edged 0.02% lower to EUR 54.99, the SBI TOP blue chip index added 0.5% to 809.98 points, mostly due to gains by Petrol and Telekom Slovenije.