The Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia, Mr Janez Janša, expressed regret that, at today’s talks with the presidents of the parliamentary parties, the parliamentary deputies representing the Hungarian and Italian national communities and the heads of groups of deputies, no progress had been made concerning the package of legislation on Slovenia’s regions currently going through the Slovenian Parliament. According to the Prime Minister, between the first and the second readings the opposition parties had not prepared any proposals that would improve the regional legislation. “I had a blank sheet of paper in front of me at the start of the meeting and it was still blank at the end,” he said after the meeting.

 

(Photo Bobo)

 

The Prime Minister said that the Government had come to the meeting with an open offer. Any constructive comment on any of the proposed measures would have been welcome, he said, as none of the solutions in the proposed laws on the regions were “written in stone”. In Mr Janša’s words, the Government would even have been willing to postpone the vote, had there been a possibility of coming to an agreement on some new proposal. “Regrettably, it has not come to that,” explained the Prime Minister, adding that the largest opposition party had declared that its leadership had decided not to endorse these laws and would only discuss going to referendum. The Zares deputy group had adopted the same position.

 

The Prime Minister reported that, at the meeting, the opposition parties had not presented any proposals for ways to fund the regions, nor had they specified which of the regions were in their view superfluous. “I asked them all twice over to specify which region they found superfluous and what form they thought the map of the regions should take. Not a single proposal was put forward,” said the Prime Minister.

 

PM Janez Janša expressed his conviction that uneven development would result if the legislation on the regions was not adopted, specifying, “one specific consequence of the gap in development is that the fact of where one is born in Slovenia can still make a significant difference.”