Slovakia was one of the main instigators for preparing a better alternative to the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), and now as the European Union prepares the alternative, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), Slovak finance minister Ivan Miklos is making demands.
Miklos would like to see different conditions set for contributions to the new mechanism than those in place for the EFSF. His problem is with the levels of contributions made by individual countries, which he says were calculated badly, as poorer countries paid more proportionately to their economies.
The calculation of who pays what to the mechanism was set according to the capital that countries had in the European Central Bank, which is calculated as 50% of GDP and 50% from the population.
Miklos wants the calculation formula to be set according to economic performance instead of the size of the population, while noting that Slovakia would consider several alternatives.