STA, 19 March 2019 - The Koper port transships the biggest share of Austrian imports and exports, with the number of containers increasing by nearly six times over the course of the past decade, port operator Luka Koper said in a press release following a meeting with Austrian business representatives on Tuesday.

Luka Koper holds a 33% market share in Austria, transshipping 7.1 million tonnes of various goods. Luka Koper has been the top port for the Austrian economy for the last eight years, according to data provided by Verkehr, an Austrian logistics journal.

Good cooperation and good rail connections are key factors in this, Luka Koper said, adding that it had established daily rail links with Austrian logistics centres.

There is a container rail link with Graz ten times a week and there are multiple links a week connecting the port with the logistics centres in Villach and Enns. Moreover, 75% of cargo headed to or coming from Austria is transported by rail, the company said.

Today's get-together of Austrian executives and Luka Koper representatives featured representatives of 26 Austrian companies focusing on logistics, transport, IT solution and construction.

STA, 14 February 2019 - Magna Steyr has welcomed the deal reached on Wednesday that persuaded an NGO not to challenge the environment permit for its paint shop in Slovenia any further. However, the multinational said the agreement did not make it possible to launch production at Hoče as yet, so its part of the job would be done at its Austria location for the time being.

The Austrian-Canadian automotive group said that it was obligated to meet the commitments to supply cars to its business partners by the agreed deadlines. The company said it had expected to be able to launch production at its EUR 160m Hoče plant near Maribor this week.

"Since this is not possible at this time, we will carry out this part of production temporarily at our Graz factory by introducing extra shifts," the multinational said, expressing the hope that a final solution allowing the earliest possible launch of production at Hoče would be found as soon as possible.

The company undertook "organisational preparations" on Monday to move production to its main facility in Austria's Graz due to uncertainty surrounding the environmental permit for the Hoče plant.

The Environment Ministry rejected the sole appeal against the environmental permit submitted by the Regional Environmental Association of Environmentalists (ROVO) from Novo Mesto, in the south-east of the country.

The ROVO threatened to take its appeal to the Administrative Court but changed its mind after yesterday's meeting with government officials who promised that the government would amend the special law on Magna investment so as to allow for the plant to have been built in a water protection area.

However, Magna will still need to wait for a 30-day period within which appeals with the court are still possible to expire. The period has been running since last Thursday when the ministry rejected ROVO's appeal.

STA, 11 February 2019 - Magna Steyr, the Austrian car industry supplier, might delay the launch of its new paint shop in Slovenia due to uncertainty over an environmental permit that has been bogged down due to appeals by a green NGO.

The EUR 160m plant in Hoče, south of Maribor, is ready for launch. A test run was scheduled to begin this month and the plant was expected to fulfil orders that Magna Styer's main production facility in Graz can no longer handle.

But the company told the STA Monday it had started organisational preparations to carry out the contracts in Graz, although it was also hopeful a solution could be found to launch the Hoče plant quickly.

The news comes just days after the Environment and Spatial Planning Ministry rejected an appeal against the environmental permit for the paint shop filed by the Regional Environmental Association of Environmentalists (ROVO), a local NGO.

The organisation has said it will press ahead and challenge the rejection in court, which means it could theoretically take months or even years before the courts have had their say.

ROVO objects to the plant having been built in a water protection area and has said the government could deal with the matter simply by changing the special law it adopted for the investment to specify that it is permitted to build such facilities in water protection areas.

The government has not responded to the idea yet beyond the Economy Ministry saying that a meeting with ROVO was planned in the coming days, after Environment Minister Jure Leben returns from a visit to Finland.

University, unions and others support the plant

The environmental NGO has come under heavy fire from multiple stakeholders in the region, including the local authorities, regional chamber of commerce, the University of Maribor and the 200 workers already hired to operate the plant.

The latest appeal came Monday, when SKEI, a large trade union, said it was concerned about a situation that poses a grave risk to the project and employees.

SKEI's regional head for Podravje Martin Dular said the NGO may be "overdoing it with its demand."

Gorazd Marinček of ROVO meanwhile noted for the STA that Magna representatives had delayed the equipping of the plant in Hoče, as a test run had been originally planned to be launched already in October 2018.

Magna submitted the documentation for environmental permit four months after the deadline, he said, adding that "after all that, attributing a 14-day or one-month delay to environmentalists is mere cynicism or excuse."

Marinček also pointed to the indications from "the sources from Magna itself" that the paint shop has only 200 orders so far for this year. "It is therefore logical that they will abolish outsourcing and concentrate the things in the core plant."

STA, 10 January 2019 - More than 90% of Austrian companies doing business in Slovenia believe the country will continue to be an investment-friendly environment this year, follows from an annual survey conducted by the representation of the Austrian economy in Slovenia, Advantage Austria Ljubljana. The skills gap remains an issue.

Around 60% of surveyed Austrian business executives said that the economic situation in Slovenia had improved last year and would advance further this year. Accordingly, more than half of the respondents said that revenue and orders would go up this year.

"Austrian companies and investors are aware that they have an incredibly interesting, dynamic, stable, competitive and reliable market with plenty of opportunities right next to them," Peter Hasslacher, the head of Advantage Austria Ljubljana, said at the presentation of the survey.

Companies doing business in Slovenia are satisfied with the accessibility of public tenders and their transparency, and with the quality, education and the motivation of the workforce in Slovenia.

However, they find it increasingly hard to find suitable workers. Among those, 73% would require more workers with secondary education and almost 27% more workers with higher education.

According to Hubert Culik, the head of coatings maker Helios, which had been owned by Austria's Ring International before being sold to Japanese Kansai Paint, there is a lack of practical training of young people in Slovenia.

"Many of our new employees require lengthy practical training despite just having finished their studies," he said.

Other measures that would further improve the business environment in Slovenia include reducing taxes and red tape, improving the flexibility of labour market, and stabilising the political situation, according to the respondents.

STA, 20 December - The construction of a northern expressway connecting the northern Koroška region to Slovenia's main motorway network and Austria's Carinthia is facing new delays, according to the latest timeline presented by the motorway company DARS on Wednesday.

Under the latest plans, an expressway between Velenje and Slovenj Gradec is to be built by 2026, which is a three-year delay compared to a protocol on the construction of the northern part of the Third Development Axis, signed by former Infrastructure Minister Peter Gašperšič last year.

In line with the protocol, work on the Velenje-Slovenj Gradec segment of the northern part of the major infrastructure project, whose goal is to connect to the national motorway network parts of the country without good links to motorways, was to start by the end of next year, but DARS's latest plans delay that by a year.

The segment connecting Slovenj Gradec to the Austrian border at Holmec was to be zoned by June 2020 but has now been delayed by another two years and a half, while the future of the segment connecting Velenje to the motorway remains unclear due to a constitutional review of the project.

"Such delays are unacceptable to us," said Aljaž Verhovnik, a member of a board overseeing the Third Development Axis project. He said that the board had rejected the new timeline.

"Apparently somebody has been misleading the public and the 100,000 people who depend on the project," he said and added that DARS was tasked with coming up with an acceptable timeline by 10 January. Otherwise, he and his initiative could call for civil disobedience.

Infrastructure Ministry State Secretary Nina Mauhler said that the ministry had tasked DARS with drafting "a new, more realistic" timeline by mid-January, because "we can hardly accept arguments for a three-year delay".

The delay has also been criticised by Infrastructure Minister Alenka Bratušek, who said that Gašperšič had signed the protocol, which "sadly appears not to have been harmonised with the investor, DARS".

On the other hand, Gašperšič told the STA that the protocol had been harmonised with DARS, which however did not want to sign it, and that he was shocked to hear of the delays. "I believe the deadlines agreed in the protocol were realistic although approximate."

"But I certainly cannot imagine that a three-year delay could occur. It is the task of the ministry to carefully examine what has changed to allow such changes in deadlines," he added.

Similarly, the chair of the Third Development Axis board, Prevalje Mayor Matic Tasič, said that while DARS did not sign the protocol, it was the entity that "prepares proposals for the ministry".

However, DARS pointed out for the STA that it had not signed the protocol and that the deadlines set down in the document were unrealistic.

"Preparations for the construction and the construction itself is far more demanding than it had been imagined by non-experts at first. We have informed the ministry about it, which is why we did not want to sign the protocol," the company said.

It also said that the EUR 800m Šentrupert-Slovenj Gradec segment was treated as a whole. If the Constitutional Court decides on the Šentrupert-Velenje part in the first quarter of next year, the entire segment could be finished in 2026, it added.

In the meantime, activities for the construction of the Velenje-Slovenj Gradec part are under way and DARS said it was trying to follow the timeline from the protocol as much as possible. According to DARS, the 17.5km segment between Velenje and Slovenj Gradec is highly complex and includes the construction of several tunnels and 16 viaducts.

STA, 5 December 2018 - Prime Minister Marjan Šarec met Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz in Vienna on Wednesday, praising good relations between the two countries, in particular economic cooperation. Nevertheless, countries have certain issues, but "they're nothing we couldn't tackle," Šarec acknowledged.

Šarec pinpointed Austrian controls on the internal Schengen border with Slovenia and its legislation that reduces child allowance for foreign citizens working in the country as the most pressing issues.

With regards to the latter, Šarec reiterated Slovenia's position that such legislation is not in line with European rules. He expects that the European Commission will take appropriate action based on a complaint of seven EU members, including Slovenia.

Slovenia also believes that the border controls, introduced amidst the 2015 migration crisis, are unwarranted, because Slovenia controls well the external Schengen border.

Kurz, on the other hand, said that Austria only introduced the controls after Germany introduced them on the Austrian borders. He indicated that controls would only be abolished once external borders of the EU were "adequately protected".

The Slovenian prime minister agreed that external EU borders should be protected well, with Slovenia especially interested in the protection of Croatia's borders with Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.

In this light, Šarec called for expanding Frontex's powers and for addressing the issue of internal Schengen border controls "in European spirit".

Nevertheless, both heads of government praised very good bilateral ties, in particular business links.

Trade between Slovenia and Austria stands at above EUR 5bn a year, with Austria the biggest foreign investor in Slovenia with around 1,000 companies, Kurz pointed out.

"We have lively movement of people, national communities in both countries and strong cultural ties," the Austrian chancellor said as he expressed satisfaction that he and Šarec had agreed to further expand cooperation.

On the other hand, Šarec praised Kurz for Austria's efforts during its presidency of the EU, especially with regards to Brexit, which should be "as painless as possible".

The pair also discussed the EU-Africa summit scheduled for this month, which Šarec believes will be a good platform for addressing migrations. The Slovenian prime minister believes that the issue must be tackled "at its source" and not "everyone for themselves".

Another topic on the agenda was the Western Balkans, with Šarec offering Slovenia's help and experience on the countries' path towards Euro-Atlantic alliances.

However, the pair did not address several other bilateral topics such as the situation of the Slovenian minority in Austria or Slovenia's potential notification of its succession to the Austrian State Treaty at the relatively short press conference following the talks.

Šarec meanwhile pointed out that Kurz and he were part of a younger generation of politicians who see the world and Europe somewhat differently. "We don't want constant returning to the past, we like to look forward," he said.

STA, 5 December 2018 - Slovenia has allocated more than EUR 212,000 to the German-speaking community in Slovenia since 2008 and another EUR 22,100 will be available to the community next year, the Government Communication Office said in response to the community's call to be recognised as a minority in the constitution.

The government service for cultural diversity and human rights has distributed more than EUR 200,000 for the projects of the German-speaking community since 2008, while the public fund for cultural activities has distributed another EUR 12,000. A call for applications will be published next year, offering EUR 22,108 for such projects.

While the community referred to the Council of Europe and the Federal Union of European Nationalities in its arguments, the government said Slovenia had no international commitments to recognise the community as a minority in the Constitution.

The only internationally binding document dealing with the issue of the German-speaking community in Slovenia is the 2001 agreement between the Slovenian and Austrian governments on cooperation in culture, education and science.

Article 15 of the agreement stipulates that the parties will cooperate in cultural, educational and scientific projects to the benefit of the German-speaking community. It does not, however, mention the legal status of the 2000-member group.

Related: Cerar – No Legal Support for Giving Slovenia’s German-Speaking Minority Official Status

When the agreement was ratified, Slovenia also adopted an interpretive statement that the German-speaking community enjoys the rights stemming from Article 61 of the Constitution, granting everyone the right to freely express belonging to their nation or national community, nurture and express their culture and use their language and script.

This reaffirms that Article 15 must not be understood as a recognition of a special status such has been granted to the Italian and Hungarian communities, the government said.

The Foreign Ministry responded by saying that the Slovenian government was ready to continue its dialogue with representatives of the German-speaking community and that additional solutions could be found within the existing legal framework to meet the needs of the group.

The Ministry of Culture has been financially supporting the cultural projects of the group's associations, societies and NGOs based on the ministry's annual calls for applications.

Slovenia has made an effort to protect the cultural heritage of the German-speaking group, including through years of research, whose results were published in various publications and presented at exhibitions.

The research covered the topography of all former villages of the community, all sacral buildings and graveyards in the area. The cultural heritage of the Gottschee Germans living in the south has been presented in several regional and local museums since 1995.

Some 75 prominent figures have also been presented in a special book, the Government Communication Office said.

STA, 1 December 2018 - Foreign Minister Miro Cerar said that there were no legal grounds for recognising the German-speaking community as a minority as he responded to a renewed call by the community to be granted the same rights as the Italian and Hungarian communities in Slovenia.

According to a report in Saturday's issue of the newspaper Večer, Cerar told Austrian members of the Slovenia-Styria committee that there were no legal grounds to recognise the minority and "no circumstances that would dictate giving a special status to this ethnic group".

"But we will work to additionally support it in its cultural activities and ensuring its identity," Cerar said on the sidelines of the meeting of the joint committee on Friday.

The Federation of Cultural Associations of the German Speaking Ethnic Group in Slovenia in Slovenia repeated its call to be recognised as a minority in the Constitution this week.

There are around 2,000 “German-speaking Slovenes” in Kočevje and Maribor

It demands that Slovenia and its public institutions finance the operations and sustainable development of cultural associations of the German speaking community in Slovenia, respect the community's members as loyal Slovenian citizens and introduce German as a teaching language in line with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of the Council of Europe.

It is estimated that the community has about 2,000 members, most of them living in the area of Kočevje in the south and in the city of Maribor in the north-east.

Slovenia believes that the status of the German-speaking community in Slovenia falls under a 2001 agreement with Austria on cooperation in culture, education and science.

Under the agreement, the German-speaking community enjoys the rights stated in Article 61 of the Constitution, which stipulates that everyone has the right to "freely express affiliation with their nation or national community, to foster and give expression to their culture, and to use their language and script".

STA, 16 November 2018 - Slovenia and six other EU members have called on the European Commission to check whether Austria's legislation set to reduce dependent child allowance for foreign citizens working in Austria complies with the EU's legal order.

Slovenia has joined the protests by Bulgaria, Lithuania and the Visegrad countries after Austria passed in late October legislation under which child benefits paid to foreign workers who are not Austrian residents would be calculated to correspond to the cost of living in their respective countries as of 1 January.

Slovenia's Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Family and Equal Opportunity said that the letter calls on European commissioner in charge of employment, social affairs, skills and labour mobility Marianne Thyssen to look into the legislative changes and take appropriate action.

The ministry also said in a statement for the STA that minister Ksenija Klampfer had expressed objections to the Austrian legislative changes on a number of occasions.

"By passing this, Austria is violating one of the key principles of the EU's legal order: equality." The changes adopted amount to discrimination, the ministry added.

It is unfair that children of workers who contribute to Austria's prosperity and are not the country's citizens should be punished with lower child benefits, the ministry said.

However, soon after the legislation was passed, Slovenia's Foreign Minister Miro Cerar said during a trip to Vienna that it was up to the European Commission to say whether Austria's new legislation amounted to discrimination.

The European Commission confirmed for the STA that it received a letter from the seven countries on Thursday and that it would look into the matter.

STA, 13 November 2018 - The EU Court of Justice has ruled in favour of a Slovenian company that filed a complaint against Austria over the system of bonds set down in the country's law on the prevention of payment and social dumping. According to lawyer Rudi Vouk, this is a landmark ruling that will have a positive effect on Slovenian companies doing business in Austria.

Čepelnik, a company based in Prevalje near the Austrian border, challenged the law after its client in Austria paid around EUR 5,000 to authorities in Völkermarkt in the company's place as a deposit for alleged violations instead of paying the company's invoice.

The EU court concluded that the legislation of a member state which allows the recipient of services to suspend payments to the contractor or to pay a security to guarantee the payment of a potential fine in place of the contractor "goes beyond what is necessary for attaining the objectives of protecting workers, combating fraud, in particular social security fraud, and preventing abuse".

The ruling is in line with the opinion of EU Advocate General Nils Wahl, who issued an opinion on the case in May. He said that measures like this system of bonds are in violation of the European directive on services and definitely exceed the scope of what is needed to enable national authorities to enforce national labour legislation.

Rudi Vouk, an Austrian lawyer of Slovenian descent, told the STA that the ruling was significant for Slovenian companies doing business in Austria.

Before the ruling, companies were in constant danger of their clients having to pay bonds for them in the event of the slightest alleged infringement of law. Additionally, potential clients were also aware of the possibility and potentially avoided Slovenian contractors.

"This danger has now been eliminated because the European court concluded that [the system of bonds] is not proportionate with the goals. Austrian legislators will have to annul the relevant provisions," Vouk said.

He added that other provisions, including those about minimum fines for infringements, "which are absurd", remain in place.

They have also been challenged at the EU court and given the latest ruling, there are reasons for optimism that the court would decide in a similar manner, Vouk added.

Čepelnik is one of the 121 Slovenian companies that complained with the European Commission over high fines and enhanced control of foreign companies providing services in Austria.

Other stories on the relationship between Slovenia and Austria can be found here