STA, 15 December 2019 - The National Assembly will start its December session with question time on Monday. The most interesting item on the week's agenda will likely be an investigative report on the arbitration wire taps in 2015 and the second reading of a proposal to abolish voluntary top up health insurance.
The top up insurance abolishment will be discussed on Thursday, with nearly seven hours planned for the debate.
It is unclear whether the changes, proposed by the opposition Left and later reshaped by the parliamentary Health Committee, will garner sufficient support.
Moreover, coalition parties have lodged a number of amendments to the changes, while the Health Insurance Institute has said that the contribution planned to substitute the premiums in the existing system would generate a EUR 70 million shortfall a year.
The coalition Pensioners' Party (DeSUS) is also sceptical of the changes, and wants the document taken off the National Assembly's agenda. DeSUS, similar to the National Party (SNS), also wants to wait for a comprehensive reform promised by the Health Ministry.
But perhaps the most interesting discussion is likely to take place on Wednesday, when the MPs are to talk about a report by the parliamentary Commission for the Oversight of Intelligence and Security Services looking into the wire taps of communication between Slovenia's agent and Slovenia-appointed arbiter in the border arbitration procedure with Croatia.
The report largely pins the blame on former agent Simona Drenik Bavdek, who has turned to the Administrative Court demanding that the National Assembly remove the report from its website and from the National Assembly's agenda.
The MPs are planned to start discussing the confidential part of the report first, while the session will be opened to the public once the National Assembly starts discussing the publicly accessible part of the report, which is also available on its website.
The MPs will also discuss legislative changes introducing a lump sum aid for families in which the mother is unemployed when she gives birth. The changes would cost EUR 13.5 million, which has not been earmarked in the budget.
On Wednesday, the MPs will also go over the second reading of the bank guarantee bill for the second rail track towards Koper and the third developmental axis, a road project connecting the Koroška and Dolenjska regions.
