NEWS
Prime Minister's press conference following the Government’s 103rd regular session
At today's session, the Government of the Republic of Slovenia adopted several resolutions and discussed draft Act regulating guarantees by the Republic of Slovenia for providing guarantees to companies for investments and two railway laws. The responsible ministers presented the adopted resolutions, and Prime Minister Pahor then answered a number of topical questions.
At today's regular session, the Government discussed the text of the Act regulating guarantees by the Republic of Slovenia for providing guarantees to companies for investments, which aims at enabling companies established in the Republic of Slovenia to obtain bank guarantees for investments. The draft act does not lay down special principles but follows Article 149 of the Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia and includes essential elements required for issuing guarantees by the state. The Act stipulates the conditions, criteria and framework procedure for issuing state guarantees. The main solutions envisage the Government to appoint a commission to examine the applications for state guarantees, consisting of experts from individual investment, financial and legal field.
The ministers also adopted the text of the amended Railway Transport Act and the amended Slovenian Railway Company Act. The draft amended Railway Transport Act provides for the functions of train paths allocation, network timetable creation and fee charging and collecting, to be exercised independently. In line with the acquis, all mentioned essential functions of the operator must be separated and assigned to an independent entity if the operator of the railway infrastructure is affiliated with a carrier. This is why the amended Act envisages the Agency for Rail Transport to take over all mentioned functions. The draft Slovenian Railway Company ct aims at establishing bases for transforming Slovenian Railways into a holding company thus determining the form, organisation and tasks of Slovenian Railway Company and its majority-owned legal entities.
Prime Minister Pahor commented on the resignation of the Staff Accreditation Council and assessed that its work had been outstanding and "the President of the Staff Accreditation Council, Bogomir Kovač, and its members deserve praise and acknowledgement." They had carried out a very important pioneering job as the Accreditation Council "clipped the wings of people who believed that the election victory entitles them to recruit as they see fit," stressed Prime Minister Pahor. Ha also said that the Council had not acted in a consistent and balanced manner as it sometimes wanted to be an accreditation council, sometimes a nomination council and, from time to time, wanted to decide on supervisory boards on its own. Being a new institution led the Council to misunderstand its role; nevertheless, the Staff Accreditation Councils was cited as an example of good practice by OECD, said Prime Minister Pahor.
At the press conference following today's Government session, Prime Minister Pahor announced that Zagreb agreed to continue talks on foreign-currency savers with the former Ljubljanska banka within the succession negotiations. Prime Minister Pahor said that together with his Croatian counterpart Kosor they undertook to find a solution for this issue in 90 days of their meeting in Bohinj and added that "today is the 75th day." Croatia agreed to address the issue of foreign-currency savers in compliance with Article 7 of Annex C to the 2001 Succession Agreement, which provides for the solution regarding the succession of guarantees for old foreign-exchange savings deposits to be negotiated by the successor states of former Yugoslavia under the auspices of the Bank for international Settlements in Basel. "Thus, the two countries found a solution to the last outstanding issue burdening their relations for almost 20 years," said Prime Minister Pahor.
Prime Minister Pahor would not comment the possible come back of the former Croatian Prime Minister, Ivo Sanader, into the politics because this concerned Croatian internal matters. Prime Minister Pahor again stressed that together with his Croatian counterpart Kosor every effort was made in addressing the outstanding issues between the two countries to reach a compromise to mutual benefit of both nations and succeeded by the Arbitration Agreement regarding the border between Slovenia and Croatia. "The solution was reached not at the expense of one over the other but to the mutual benefit," underlined the Prime Minister adding that toady the Arbitration Agreement stands as a reference at "many international conferences."