Country data: Slovenia

All comparisons are with the figures for 10 December 2020, the previous reporting date.

The last 2 years, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Member State authorities to address pressing priorities and affected their performance in transposing EU rules to some degree. In this context, the Commission has taken a number of extraordinary measures aimed at relieving the strain on Member States’ administrative resources. Nevertheless, it has also made clear that the Member States’ legal obligations to transpose EU directives in time remain unchanged.

Transposition deficit (percentage of all directives not transposed): 1.2% (last report: 1.6%) – a decrease of 0.4 percentage points (the highest decrease among all Member States).            
EU average = 1.6%; proposed target (in the Single Market Act) = 0.5%

Slovenia has gone below the 1% threshold set by the European Council in December 2019, after years of constant effort to go and stay there, but constraints due to the COVID-19 pandemic have probably affected the country’s performance. The improvement made in this reporting period puts Slovenia close to the 1% target and suggests things are going in the right direction again. Nevertheless, Slovenia did not transpose 31% of the single market directives (8 out of 26) due to have been transposed in the 6 months before the cut-off date for calculating the deficit (1 June to 30 November 2021). This shows that Slovenia could organise the timely transposition of directives even better.

Overdue directives: 12 (last report: 16) including 5 in connectivity/media/digital society sector and 3 on consumers. No directive is more than 2 years overdue.

Average delay in transposing directives: 6.4 months (last report: 8.9 months) – a decrease of 2.5 months. Slovenia is one of 9 Member States that reduced their average delay in the reporting period.    
EU average = 8.6 months

Slovenia managed to transpose one long-overdue directive (due for 2 years or more). Of its 12 outstanding directives, 9 are due for less than 6 months.

Conformity deficit (percentage of all directives transposed incorrectly): 1.3% (last report: 1.2%) – a slight increase of 0.1 percentage points and Slovenia’s highest ever deficit.             
EU average = 1.3%; proposed target (in the Single Market Act) = 0.5%

The number of new infringement proceedings that the Commission has launched against Member States for incorrectly transposing single market directives has more than halved in 2 years. With 13 directives presumed to have been incorrectly transposed, Slovenia’s conformity deficit is right in line with the EU average but very far from the proposed 0.5% target.

All comparisons are with the figures for 1 December 2020, the previous reporting date.

Pending single market cases: 24 (5 new cases and 9 cases closed, including 5 on transport (mainly sustainable and intelligent transport); last report: 28 pending cases) – a decrease of 4 cases and below the EU average.   
EU average = 27 cases

Slovenia’s number of pending cases steadily increased and almost doubled between December 2016 and December 2020 (+87%, from 15 to 28 cases). With a 14% reduction in the reporting period, the country is now back on track and still below the EU average. However, it is no longer one of 10 Member States with the lowest number of infringement cases.

The Commission launched 120 new cases against Member States in the reporting period (besides those for late transposition), and these were still pending on 1 December 2021. A total of 5  cases were launched against Slovenia, which is above the EU average of 4 new cases launched in the reporting period. However, 9 Slovenian cases have been resolved since December 2020, which is better than the EU average (8).

Problematic sectors: the environment (10 cases) and transport (5). Together, these make up 63% of all pending cases.

Average case duration: 41.3 months for the 21 single market cases not yet sent to the European Court of Justice (last report: 29 months) – this is a huge increase of 12.3 months and the longest average case duration ever for Slovenia, which is now just below the EU average.              
EU average = 42.8 months

Slovenia’s average case duration has significantly increased in the last 3 years (+31%). Four Slovenian cases on air transport and the environment have been running for between 7 and 11 years and have considerable effect on the calculation of the average duration. Nevertheless, the launch of 5 new cases (less than 1 year old) and the resolution of 9 cases with a moderate average duration of 9 months have some impact on the final result.

Time taken to comply with Court rulings: 76.3 months for the only single market case at the Court-ruling stage of the procedure and closed in the last 5 years (last report: same). 
EU average = 46.8 months

There has been no change since the previous period. Slovenia has one case on air pollution that had been running for more than 6 years. It is no longer the Member State with the longest time lag among the 23 Member States that complied with the Court rulings in the last 5 years. However, it is still in the top five of Member States that take the longest to comply with Court rulings.

Performance – Slovenia performed moderately well.

• Results for three indicators were above the EEA average.
• Results for all indicators either increased or remained relatively stable.
• Efforts were made to improve the percentage of requests accepted within 1 week and the speed in answering requests.

• Caseload – small
  Submitted cases: 29 (42 in 2020)
  Received cases: 10 (11 in 2020)

• Cases not accepted: 10 (16 in 2020)

• Resolution rate: 80% (90% in 2020)
• Handling time (as home centre)
  Reply within 7 days: 100% (100% in 2020) – very good
  Cases prepared within 30 days: 90% (95% in 2020) – good
  Solutions accepted within 7 days: 80% (87% in 2020 ) – good

• Cases not accepted within 30 days:  70% (75% in 2020) - good

• Handling time (as lead centre)
  Cases accepted within 7 days:  80% (80% in 2020) – good
  Cases closed in 10 weeks: 80% (90% in 2020) – good
• Staffing level
  Sufficient

In 2022, the average payment delay (the time exceeding the legal or contractually agreed payment terms) by Slovenian public authorities was 13 days.

The average number of days needed for a business to have its invoices paid by other businesses (business-to-business payments) was 50.52 days.

Note: A typical (mid-ranking) EU country is used for the EU average for all indicators except  the publication rate. Due to delays in data availability, publication rate results are based on 2020 data.

Note: The EU restrictiveness indicator (EURI) measures the level of restrictiveness for the cross-border provision of services and the right of establishment for seven groups of professional services with a high share in the EU firms’ intermediate consumption or cross-border mobility. The level of restrictiveness is measured on a scale from 0 (least restrictive) to 6 (most restrictive).