NEWS

Adoption of legislation is of vital importance to the state

At today’s 16th extraordinary session of the National Assembly, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia, Janez Janša, discussed the unfinished strategic projects and delays incurred in Slovenia during recent years and measures to promote growth, to be discussed by deputies at today's session.

 

According to the Prime Minister, it is of the utmost importance to carry out, prior to the discussion of the agenda of the session, a detailed examination of the report on strategic delays incurred in Slovenia over the last three years or in the recent period, which also resulted in the need for the adoption of certain measures. In his view, the assessment based on strategic delays in the projects provides to a large extent a basis for many measures included in the legislation that is of vital importance for the state. In this connection, Prime Minister Janša highlighted that, at today's session, laws eliminating hundreds of barriers and blockades would be discussed, and the need to adopt them was also based on Slovenia's current financial situation.

 

In his address to deputies, the Prime Minister stressed that the report on the unfinished strategic projects of ministries, together with the information on the implementation of the Slovenia's Development Strategy 2005-2013 and the Resolution on National Development Projects 2007-2023, provided a basis for establishing the actual situation and taking further measures. According to Prime Minister Janša, the Government started preparation work for Slovenia's Development Strategy for after 2013, which would provide a basis for drawing on European funds in the next European perspective; in this preparation work, the Government also examined the assessment of the strategy implementation. The Prime Minister said that "checking the strategy implementation report and other documents which the state has had during the recent years, shows nothing," adding that so many incurred delays "would neither be possible to make up for in some future years nor eliminate all negative consequences". He emphasised that financial resources for certain projects were provided in the past; however, nothing important was carried out to use them. According to Prime Minister Janša, in times of financial crisis and in light of the fact that the investment funds were limited to European funds, the Government should make every effort to "eliminate the barriers which prevent and hinder the opportunity to use these funds".

 

According to the Prime Minister, some acts have already been adopted eliminating barriers and improving the business environment in Slovenia; in this regard, he pointed out that certain measures could have been taken earlier and that a session of the National Assembly with today's session agenda should also have been convened earlier.  "Had the session with today's agenda been convened three years ago, it would have been easier for us all. However, if we continue to postpone, the situation will worsen, and perhaps even become impossible to solve – and we should be particularly aware of this," said the Prime Minister.

 

He went on to discuss strategic delays in certain areas. According to the Prime Minister, in the area of finance we inherited two strategic delays, namely a regulation of management of state-owned assets and delay in overcoming the financial crunch. He noted that the Government under the former prime minister, Borut Pahor, should have had adopted the strategy of state-owned assets management by 30 June 2011, which, however, was not implemented; this was why the current Government started to work on the issue. Its work resulted in a comprehensive concept concerning the management of the state-owned assets under the Act on Slovenian Sovereign Holding.  Prime Minister Janša observed that "this Act will enable a comprehensive strategy and management of state-owned property and sale of strategic state-owned assets". 

 

The other strategic delay in the area of finance was a delay in overcoming the financial crunch. In this connection, the Prime Minister noted that the Slovenian banking system was in a serious situation, the Slovenian economy deeply in debt and lacking creditworthiness. We should also bear in mind the adverse international environment to which Slovenia, as an export-oriented economy, had to adapt. He went on to underline that with the establishment of the Slovenian Sovereign Holding, in the banking sector, a restructuring of the balance sheet would be implemented, which would increase the creditworthiness of banks and improve their capacity to facilitate borrowing. "How these measures will be transformed into the economy growth depends on the adopted measures promoting growth and measures discussed at the extraordinary session of the National Assembly," said Prime Minister Janša and emphasised that the dynamics of transformation also depends on the dynamics of the international environment.

 

He added that the government had also adopted some solutions for regulating the banking system and quoted the acts that provided for such solutions. He also pointed out that the current session of the National Assembly addressed the major part of the problems that had given rise to the credit crunch and the resulting financial crisis.

 

According to the Prime Minister, major strategic delays occurred in the drawing on EU funds by the corporate sector. He also stressed that if the previous government had kept up with the dynamics of EU funds-based investments that had been characteristic for the 2004-2008 government the total investments in projects in Slovenia today would have included at least EUR 500 million more EU funds, "which could have significantly mitigated the lack of available financial resources".

Slovenia is also witnessing significant delays in the area of environmental and transport infrastructure as well as in the area of spatial planning, and the dynamics of implementing these projects is behind schedule. "We urgently adopted measures to accelerate the drawdown of funds and to eliminate backlogs; however, not everything can be made up for; the current situation shows that we have achieved a positive net result in EU terms," said the Prime Minister. He also pointed to the delays in the improvement of the railway infrastructure and in the construction of roads, motorways and in the implementation of national spatial plans. According to the Prime Minister, the time lost carrying out those activities could simply not be made up for, and inadequate preparation and failure to site the projects and revision procedures are the main reasons for such delays.

 

Considerable delays also exist in the fields of energy, science, culture and sports, as revealed by the report on unfinished strategic projects. In this connection, the Prime Minister pointed, among other things, to the delays in broadband development in white areas, in the 4th generation mobile communications development, in the development of the terrestrial digital broadcasting and to the new electronic communications act. He also pointed to the non-implementation of air quality programmes and to the backlogs in administrative procedures conducted by the Environmental Agency of the Republic of Slovenia. The non-implementation and the delays in the implementation of these projects have also triggered legal proceedings against Slovenia before the Court of Justice of the European Union.

 

In the field of defence, according to Prime Minister Janša, the previous government spent three years deliberating about whether or not to terminate the purchase contract for medium armoured vehicles but reached no decision. The Prime Minister also stressed that Slovenia still had considerable court backlogs and that the time needed to settle commercial disputes was four times the EU average, which is also one of the reasons for the collapse of companies, and the late payment culture. "No verdict has been passed in serious economic crime proceedings during all these years," said the Prime Minister. There are unfinished investment projects in the field of health care, one of the problems being the lack of funds.

 

The Prime Minister added that there are also delays in other areas and that it was impossible to list them all. He pointed out that Slovenia also lagged behind in the implementation of projects which were deliberately delayed. In this respect he highlighted the Emonika project. If this project had been carried out and not stopped by Ljubljana’s municipal authorities, 2000 new jobs would have been created, according to the Prime Minister.

 

In his view, the cause of the many delays in various areas lay in the fact that, in recent years, a system of governing from the background in which benefits are sought by individuals or lobbyists whose interests are intertwined or in conflict, has been created to perfection. The Prime Minister is of the opinion that the majority of these obstacles have been systemically made possible by means of deliberately intricate procedures whose lack of transparency paves the way to corruption. "The elaborate system of obstacles destroys our country at all – including systemic – levels," he added. He noted that the anti-corruption commission had raised no objection to this type of procedural regulation and intricacy but had objected to its simplification, which was strange. According to the Prime Minister, those who cause delays in the current system are not held accountable. The only person that is held accountable for the delays, at least politically after each election, is the minister responsible for these matters.

 

The Prime Minister concluded by saying that, by adopting the Fiscal Balance Act, the government had completed half of the tasks planned and that a lot of work still lay ahead of it in the autumn when the 2013-2014 budget is to be adopted.