NEWS

Prime Minister’s press conference

At today's press conference, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia, Borut Pahor, outlined the major resolutions and decisions adopted by the Government at its 64th regular session.

 

(Foto: Tamino Petelinšek/STA)

 

Today, the ministerial corps adopted the draft opinion regarding the request of a group of deputies for an extraordinary session of the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia. The request relates to the document entitled "Proposal addressed to the Bank of Slovenia to submit to the National Assembly a report, within the constitutional and statutory provisions, on suspicions of corrupt funding of companies, whose shareholders are holders of public authority in the executive and legislative branch of power at the national level, by the majority state-owned business banks in the time of the worst credit crunch". The ministerial corps decided to support the proposal of the Committee on Finance and Monetary Policy that the initiative be discussed by the National Assembly at an extraordinary session.  The Government also agreed that in reporting on the internal data of banks obtained during the implementation of the supervision of banking operations to the National Assembly, the Bank of Slovenia should observe the restrictions provided for by the Bank of Slovenia Act and the Banking Act for such cases.

  

At today's session, the Slovenian Government also evaluated the third package of anti-crisis measures intended to improve the economic and social situation in Slovenia. "The fight against crisis is the fight for new jobs" is a document prepared by the Social Democratic Party, in which it took a stance on individual measures by assessing whether it was already working on or envisaging a particular or similar action, and whether the proposed measure was acceptable or unacceptable. The majority of the proposed measures only indicate the direction, in which the economic policies should be steered. Therefore, their implementation can be subject to different interpretations with potentially different implications for public finances. The principle conclusion made by the Slovenian Government was that these measures largely indeed overlapped. However, the Government is obliged to pursue the objectives of consolidating public finances by 2013, a circumstance which the above document did not consider. The proposed measures mainly increase the expenditure and reduce the public finance revenue. Therefore, they are in contrast to the objectives proposed by the Government in its efforts to reduce public expenditure and state borrowing.

 

Prime Minister Pahor went on to express his satisfaction with the decision that this topic would be further discussed at tomorrow's extraordinary session of the National Assembly as, according to Mr Pahor, "this topic is of crucial importance for Slovenia." He also emphasised that in order to achieve the set objectives, all measures should first be carefully reviewed.  "We are not behind schedule, and we are ambitious and politically bold, well aware of our duty, which is to take good care of the stability of public finances and not our political career. The strategy will fully reflect this attitude," added Mr Pahor.