STA, 19 January 2022 - The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China labelled on Wednesday Prime Minister Janez Janša's statements about Taiwan as "dangerous", and expressed strong opposition. The reaction comes after Janša said in Monday's interview with an Indian TV station that Slovenia and Taiwan were discussing setting up mutual representation offices.

"Taiwan is an inseparable part of China's territory. The government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legitimate government representing the whole of China, and the one-China principle is the universally recognised norm of international relations and the universal consensus of the international community," ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told the press in Beijing.

"It's also the political basis of China-Slovenia and China-Europe relations," he said as quoted by the Chinese English-language web portal CGTN.

In the interview he gave to the Indian public service broadcaster Doordarshan, Janša said that Slovenia and Taiwan are "working on exchanging representatives".

He explained the representatives would not be at the level of embassies, but at the "same level that many EU countries already have".

Janša also said Slovenia would support any sovereign decision of the Taiwanese people, including independence, should that be their free decision.

He was very critical of China over its response to the decision by Lithuania to open a diplomatic representation office in Taipei.

The Taiwanese Foreign Ministry meanwhile expressed "gratitude" for Janša's "staunch support" on Twitter on Tuesday as it retweeted Janša's interview.

The STA has contacted the Chinese Embassy in Ljubljana, which has not commented on the matter yet.

STA, 18 January 2022 - Prime Minister Janez Janša revealed in an interview with the Indian public service broadcaster Doordarshan that Slovenia and Taiwan are "work[ing] on exchanging representatives". He was critical of China over its response to the decision by Lithuania to open a diplomatic representation office in Taipei.

Janša noted that the mentioned exchange of representatives between Slovenia and Taiwan would not take place at the level of embassies, as it would take place at the "same level that many EU countries already have."

Much of the half an hour interview aired on Monday revolved around China, with the Slovenian prime minister pointing to the country's responsibility for the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

He said that "we have to discuss this issue" and to "make the Chinese accountable" for "not acting in good faith" when it comes to notifying the rest of the world about the threat of the novel coronavirus in a timely manner.

As for Taiwan, Janša said that Slovenia would support any sovereign decision of the Taiwanese people. "If they want to join China ... without any pressure, military intervention, blackmailing or strategic cheating as it is happening in Hong Kong currently, we will support it".

"But if the Taiwanese people want to live independently, we also have to support this position," Janša added.

He criticised China for its response to Lithuania announcing the opening of a diplomatic representation office in Taiwan and a Taiwanese diplomatic mission in Lithuania with trade restrictions.

Janša noted that "a vast majority of EU member states hold a kind of representative office with Taiwan" and that there were some slight differences in the naming of the missions, which was however not significant.

While China protested the opening of such offices by some European countries, "they never went so far as they did in this case", the prime minister said, adding that it was "terrifying" to try to isolate a country in such a way.

"The EU has formally backed Lithuania, and I think that any kind of pressure on Lithuania and some other countries in Europe will not benefit China's government. Good trade relations are in the common interest."

Commenting on the relations between Russia and the EU and NATO in relation to the crisis in Ukraine, Janša spoke about the possibility of "coordination between Beijing and Moscow" in instigating crises in order to put pressure on NATO.

"If somebody is pushed to deal with two major crises in two different parts of the world, they have to split their diplomatic, economic and military efforts. This is why those threats are somehow linked, coordinated."

As for Slovenian-Indian relations, Janša noted the visit to Slovenia by Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar at the Bled Strategic Forum last September, when the situation in the Indo-Pacific region was discussed.

The prime minister assessed that "despite all the problems with Russia and Ukraine, the key issue now is the Indo-Pacific", adding that "India is a crucial country for balancing these tensions and for this part of the globe to live in peace."

STA, 17 January 2022 - UPDATED 21:30 Employees in health, social affairs and education as well as students will be exempted from quarantine under certain conditions as of Wednesday. Entire classes will be quarantined only if more than 30% of students are infected in the span of 14 days, the government decided at a correspondence session on Monday.

Under the new quarantine rules, revised at the initiative of the public health authorities, staff in health, social affairs and education will be also exempted from quarantine in the event of high-risk contact provided they test for coronavirus daily for a week and use a FFP2 face mask in the workplace.

If these essential workers have been in close contact with someone who tested positive for coronavirus outside work, they must inform their employer about this and observe the same course of protective measures.

The same exemption will apply to pupils in primary school and students in secondary school or university who have been in contact with someone with Covid-19 in their educational environment - as long as they do daily rapid tests for a week while in school, but they will not be required to wear a FFP2 mask.

The only ones who will still be required to self-isolate are those who test positive.

Entire classes will be quarantined only if more than 30% of students of a single class test positive over the span of 14 days. This will also be the case in kindergartens.

The ongoing quarantine orders that have been issued or will have been issued before Wednesday will still have to be heeded according to the previous regime, Health Minister Janez Poklukar told a press conference after the government session.

The new quarantine exemptions come after concerns have been raised in schools and other institutions over either quarantine-related staff shortages or the number of classes switching to distance learning.

They add to the existing exemptions that have been in place since 10 January: people who have received a booster shot of a coronavirus vaccine, those who have been fully immunised and have recovered from Covid-19 or those who have recovered from the disease at least ten days ago and no longer than 45 days ago.

The latter exemptions have superiority over the new ones, Poklukar said, meaning, for example, that a teacher who has been jabbed with a booster will not be required to test daily for a week to be exempted from quarantine.

According to the latest data from the national tracker Covid-19 Sledilnik, which cites information from the Education Ministry, 31,735 primary school pupils or some 16% and 12,035 secondary school students or roughly 16% were quarantined on Friday due to high-risk contact.

The government also amended today a decree on exceptions to the Covid pass mandate under which under-12s do not have to comply with the recovered-vaccinated-tested (PCT) rule.

The total of rapid antigen tests per month that are provided to pupils has increased to 20 in line with the new rules.

Presenting the updated rules, Slovenia's chief epidemiologist Mario Fafangel pointed out that more than 40,000 quarantines were ordered per week in the country, which put a lot of pressure on the system.

Epidemiologists agreed to the exemptions for some critical infrastructure sectors, as the large number of quarantines makes it very difficult to operate.

"Amending the quarantine rules at this point obviously increases the risk, but failing to ensure the functioning of critical infrastructure also poses a risk to people's health," Fafangel said.

STA, 17 January 2022 - Slovenian police recorded 10,067 attempts at illegal border crossing last year, a decrease of 31.2% on the year before. Asylum applications, however, rose substantially, official police statistics show.

While the number of migrants from Pakistan, Morocco and Bangladesh, among the top four source countries last year, dropped substantially, there were slightly more migrants from Afghanistan, which became the biggest source country with 3,208 migrants registered.

The number of migrants from Turkey more than doubled to 737. There was also a slight increase in migrants from Iran, of whom there were 475, and Kosovo, from 168 to 239.

Slovenia has long been mostly a transit country, but in recent years applications for international protection have started increasing as well, rising by 41% last year to 5,651.

Almost half the applicants were from Afghanistan, followed by Pakistan, Turkey, Iran and Iraq. The report says almost all Afghans submit asylum applications.

Despite requesting asylum, however, the vast majority of migrants leave the country before their applications have been processed.

"After they are accommodated in asylum facilities, most of them leave of their own accord and continue their journey to their actual destination countries," the police report says.

Another major change compared to 2020 is the number of persons returned to foreign law enforcement, which declined from more than 10,000 to just under 4,000. The vast majority, 3,858, were returned to Croatia.

STA, 12 January 2022 - A total of 7,420 coronavirus infections were recorded in Slovenia on Tuesday in what is by far the record daily number since the start of the epidemic. The positivity rate again exceeded 50%, data released by the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ) on Wednesday shows. 13 Covid patients died, up 10 on the day before.

The notable daily rise of more than 2,200 cases comes a day after the number of confirmed infections exceeded 5,000 for the first time since March 2020.

The 7-day average of daily cases was up by 476 to 4,367 and the 14-day incidence per 100,000 people increased by 263 to 2,142.

According to the NIJZ, a total of 45,459 people are estimated to be actively infected, up by some 5,550 compared to yesterday's estimate.

Government data show that there are now 538 Covid patients in hospital, a daily drop of 15, of whom 154 are in intensive care, down six.

A total of 57% of Slovenia's population (or 1,197,788 people) have been fully vaccinated against Covid, with the share for adults (aged at least 18) at 67%. A booster shot has meanwhile been administered to 516,729 people.

Get the latest data on COVID and Slovenia, with lots of visualisations

Dnevnik: Govt Withdrawing Funds from of Independent Artists, Producers to Silence Critics

STA, 12 January 2022 - The Culture Ministry is trying to discipline independent artists and producers by denying them funds offered as part of a EUR 3.8 million call for applications for 2022-2025, the newspaper Dnevnik says in Wednesday's commentary headlined Unbearable Simplicity of Suppressing Critics.

Vasko Simoniti is not the first culture minister to say that Slovenia has too many artists, but he is the minister who has made the greatest effort to do something about it.

For him, "superfluous" are those who are active in the non-governmental sector, whom the current government finds stubborn and whom it does not get along with.

As a result, the idea that the number of NGOs and self-employed in culture is "financially unsustainable" found its way into a new draft national culture programme, even though funds for non-institutional culture represent but a few percent of the entire culture budget.

It is thus no surprise that the public call for applications for funding for the next four years, on which many NGOs depend, has caused uneasiness among the applicants.

This is partly because the number of programmes to be funded is limited and partly because, despite a record culture budget for the coming years, the ministry has hinted at a cut in funding of independent artists and producers.

The scarcity of funds for this group is nothing new because the country has a rigid culture model in which most of the funds go to public institutions. While the previous governments made efforts to cushion the situation, Simoniti seems to be using it to dismantle the culture sector to make it to the liking of "the second republic".

It is hard to overlook comments that it is those who criticise the government's policies that have been left without funds, which is a kind of censorship of thought and creativity.

Dnevnik points to Glej, an independent theatre group, which has been left without funding, formally because other NGOs' programmes have scored more points than it had.

However, it indicates that the true reason could be the fact that Glej's head is also the head of an association that "regularly points to disputable and harmful decisions of the ministry".

In other words, depriving NGOs of funds is the only true tool the authorities have at their disposal for disciplining, Dnevnik says, adding that in NGOs, politics cannot simply replace heads that are not to its liking with servile staff without professional integrity, as is the case in public institutions.

STA, 11 January 2022 - Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Janković and his two sons have been acquitted of tax evasion concerning the sale of shares of the retailer Mercator in 2006 as the court handed down its ruling after a month-long trial on Tuesday. Janković said the acquittal was expected.

Janković, CEO of Mercator until 2007, was charged with tax evasion in the sale of 47,000 Mercator shares to the family company, and his sons, Jure and Damjan, were charged with abetting.

The prosecution claimed he avoided paying roughly EUR 103,000 in capital gains tax via a series of transactions involving two companies owned by his family, Electa Holding and Electa Inženiring, and a bank loan.

The prosecution claimed that Janković had control over Electa Inženiring all along and was still the owner of the shares that were only parked with the company until the sale.

Janković has maintained his innocence. The linchpin of his defence was that the Financial Administration had revoked its decision that he owes tax after conducting a second round of tax inspection, because no irregularities had been found.

During the trial, he accused the prosecutor, Blanka Žgajnar, of "bullying" him and abusing the court.

The court ended up determining that Janković had sold the shares in 2004, before the capital gains tax entered into effect, whereas in 2006 the shares were sold on by Electa Inženiring.

It therefore ruled that these were not fictitious transactions between family members and companies since everything was clear in accounting terms. "It is impossible to say that this was a fictitious transaction for tax purposes," judge Mojca Kocjančič said.

Janković said he had expected an acquittal but described the procedure as "an encroachment of representatives of the authorities in the rights of my family."

He described as "unfathomable" the prosecutor's decision to proceed with the case despite the Financial Administration's decision, saying it was "sad and ridiculous" that the prosecutor today read from the Financial Administration's decision that had been revoked.

Žgajnar, the prosecutor, insisted that she had proved wrongdoing in the course of the trial and announced she would appeal the ruling.

STA, 11 January 2022 - Slovenia's senior politicians and the country's members of the European Parliament (MEPs) took to Tweeter to express condolences upon the death of David Sassoli, the president of the European Parliament, who died this morning, labelling him as a great democrat, and a proud and sincere European.

National Assembly Speaker Igor Zorčič said he was honoured to have been able to work with Sassoli during Slovenia's EU presidency in the second half of last year.

Prime Minister Janez Janša said, "We are sorry at the death of President Sassoli. At this difficult moment, our thoughts are with his family and friends."

President Borut Pahor labelled Sassoli as a great democrat and a sincere European. "Upon the death of European Parliament President and my dear friend David Sassoli, I express condolences to the family and the European Parliament on my own behalf and on behalf of the Republic of Slovenia."

The Foreign Ministry said that it was deeply saddened by Sassoli's death, and labelled the late official a man who strongly believed in Europe and "our common future".

"Sassoli's death is a big loss for our European family. Our thoughts and compassion are with his family and those closest to him," the ministry said on Tweeter.

Defence Minister Matej Tonin, the leader of New Slovenia (NSi), said that "we have lost a proud European who epitomised the true values of united Europe".

Some of Slovenia's MEPs have also already expressed their condolences, with Sassoli's S&D colleague Tanja Fajon saying her heart was broken. "The European Parliament has lost a true leader, democracy and the rule of law have lost a champion, and I have lost a dear friend ...".

"Grazie, Presidente, for your unrelenting faith in united Europe and for everything good you have done for Europe and all of us," tweeted MEP Milan Brglez (S&D).

MEP Ljudmila Novak from the EPP wrote that Sassoli "strongly believed in unified Europe where democracy is the key value. As an ex-journalist, he was a strong fighter for the freedom of expression."

Condolences were also expressed by Klemen Grošelj and Irena Joveva (Renew). "A sad day for the European Parliament and the EU at the much too premature death of a dedicated and resolute fighter for a better Europe at these demanding times for all of us and for our institution," wrote Grošelj.

Sassoli died in hospital in Aviano in Italy last night at the age of 65, after he was admitted on 26 December due to a serious complication with his immune system, while he also had health problems before. His term of European Parliament president was to expire next week.

STA, 11 January 2022 - While the cost for the state for tackling the Covid-19 epidemic in 2020 amounted to EUR 2 billion, expenditure only grew in 2021 by a further EUR 800 million. In 2020, the state spent the most money on preserving jobs and providing liquidity to companies, and last year expenditure was dominated by bonuses for public sector employees.

The direct cost of the epidemic-related measures from the spring of 2020 to the end of 2021 amounted to EUR 4.8 billion, as another EUR 2.8 billion was added to the cost last year.

The first package of measures was adopted by the National Assembly at the end of March 2020, followed by eight anti-coronavirus laws and an emergency law to assist the tourism sector and related industries in July last year.

Just before the start of 2022, another emergency law was passed in parliament, introducing some new bonuses and compensations in the event of complications related to vaccination against Covid-19.

In order to prevent lay-offs in companies in the face of declining revenue and restrictions of business, the government started taking a number of measures to preserve jobs immediately after the epidemic was declared almost two years ago.

EUR 1.1 billion in such measures was paid to companies in 2020, which is more than half of the total expenditure in the first year of the epidemic, and an additional EUR 633 million was paid last year.

The best received by employees was the measure of subsidised furlough, which expired at the end of last June, while employers also had the measure of subsidised part-time work at their disposal until the end of last September.

The state will also cover for the costs of wages related to quarantine or force majeure related to the epidemic until the end of February this year, if the measure is not extended.

The state also financed the universal monthly basic income for the self-employed and other eligible groups in the first wave of the epidemic and again in the second wave until the end of last June, with EUR 238 million paid last out year for this purpose.

A total of EUR 630 million was spent in 2021 for job-preserving measures, which is almost 50% less than in 2020. This is due to business being restricted for a longer period in 2020 than last year, and partly due to the quicker economic recovery.

Measures for maintaining liquidity were also available to companies, including deferral of taxes or payment of taxes in instalments, a loan guarantee scheme and reimbursement of fixed costs.

The latter measure was implemented at the beginning of last year retroactively for as of September 2020 and has so far cost the state EUR 309 million.

The amount of paid bonuses to employees under the anti-coronavirus legislation adopted so far increased sharply last year in comparison to 2020 - from EUR 204 million to EUR 822 million.

The largest amount, EUR 745 million, was earmarked for bonuses for work in hazardous conditions under the collective agreement for the public sector, which amount to 65% of the hourly rate of the basic salary of public sector employee.

The largest amount of such bonuses was paid to employees in public institutions owned by municipalities, followed by healthcare employees.

The state also spent more money last year for other costs related to the management of the epidemic, including costs of protective equipment, tests and research. These costs amounted to EUR 385 million or almost three times more than in 2020.

Also included in the anti-coronavirus legislation were bonuses for various social groups aimed at maintaining consumption and improving their social situation. EUR 287 million was provided for these measures last year, which is on a par with 2020.

Another EUR 630 million has been secured in the 2022 budget for anti-coronavirus measures. This is not the final figure, as the amount could be increased depending on the pace of vaccination and the spread of the Omicron variant of coronavirus.