Slovenia/ 5.1 General legislation  

5.1.2 Division of jurisdiction

At the moment, Slovenia has two political territorial levels: state and municipal. As described in chapter 4.3, there are no regions in Slovenia; not yet. The construction of regions (and their number) has been one of the most sensitive political questions in Slovenia for a long time.

The Ministry for Culture prepares system solutions and performs administrative, expert and other tasks in the area of:

• Art (performing arts, musical arts, visual arts, architecture and modelling, inter-media art, book and library science);
• Cultural Heritage (monument protection, museums, archives included the management of the register of cultural heritage and the development of an information system and the documenting of the cultural heritage);
• Media and audio-visual culture (besides regular tasks ministry evaluates the circumstances and proposes measures in reference to ensuring media pluralism);
• European Matters and Cultural Development (EU affairs, cooperation with international organisations dealing with cultural policy issues, evaluation, development and documenting cultural policy);
• Minority Cultural Rights and Development of Cultural Diversity;
• Slovene Language; and
• Promotion of Slovene Culture and International Co-operation.

Supervision of the performance of statutory and regulative provisions in the area of culture and media is done by the Inspectorate of the Republic of Slovenia for Culture and Media, a body incorporated within the Ministry.

Tasks concerning archive and documentary material are performed by the Archive of the Republic of Slovenia, a body incorporated within the Ministry. According to the Archives and Archival Institutions Act (Official Gazette No. 30/2006) the state assumes responsibility for all 6 regional archives.

The relationship between the state and the municipalities (210) in the field of culture is regulated by the Act on Enforcing Public Interest in the Field of Culture (2002).

The state finances national public institutions, public programmes of NGOs and projects that are of importance to the whole of Slovenia. Besides the Law provides special attention to:

• Slovenian minorities in Austria, Italy, Hungary and Slovenians throughout the world; (in 2006 this concern was transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs);
• the two official minority groups in Slovenia: Hungarian and Italians;
• the Roma community;
• the cultural integration of immigrants; and
• the special cultural needs of blind, deaf and dumb and otherwise handicapped groups.

The municipalities are obliged to:

• ensure, in accordance with special sector laws, the functioning of libraries, museums and galleries and look after cultural heritage in their areas and at the same time to maintain cultural monuments owned by them (the Librarianship Act (Official Gazette No. 87/2001 in 96/2002), the Cultural Heritage Protection Act (Official Gazette No. 16/2008 and 123/2008);
• cover other cultural needs of their citizens (amateur culture, local cultural centres, publishing, libraries, arts cinema..) identified by the local cultural programmes; and
• provide spaces that are intended for cultural activities in their area and upgrading their cultural infrastructure.

The municipalities, which historically have developed into cultural centres of broader significance, are bound by the law to exercise and develop this role also in the future. The state is supposed to help them in doing so by additional means, based on special agreements between the state and municipality. At the present moment, the state still finances local public cultural institutions of broader significance directly (around 40).

Due to the influence of the EU, there are now 12 statistical regions. In 2006, the Slovenian constitution changed and the constitutional amendments on local self-government, which are crucial for the formation of provinces in Slovenia, were adopted finally. It is now explicitly stated that the provinces should be set up by law, as well as having their status and jurisdiction defined. It is now possible to transfer some jurisdiction to local authorities without their approval. However, the state must also earmark the necessary funds for the new tasks. This move is being implemented to enact the principle of subsidiarity. This development is an opportunity to entrust the regions with responsibility (including funding) for larger state cultural institutions and therefore overcome the current gap between state funding and local funding. In addition to decentralisation and subsidiarity, the amendments are important as they give provinces the necessary framework to act as partners for European structural funds and cross-border regional co-operation.

The sensitive political process of setting up regions became one of the main topics in Slovenia. The National Programme for Culture 2008-2011 underlines that, despite the transfer of powers and funding to provinces, the national cultural policy will continue to be tasked with promoting the best programmes and projects of the performers of cultural programmes regardless of their status or establishment. The political coalition in power from 2004 to 2008 announced that regionalisation is its political priority but it failed in its realisation. The execution of this project will fall into the next political mandate. Regionalisation is also a key issue for cultural development and for further development of the cultural infrastructure (see also chapter 2.2) since 40 municipal institutions of broader importance that are state funded and municipal founded could become regional or at least recognise their regional dimension. The Act on Local Finances (Official Gazette No. 123/2006) enacted that the state shall stop their funding not later than 1 of January in 2009 or when planned regions start to function. The legal provision for national recognition of cultural institution of broader importance as a basis for state funding remains, but now only as a possibility and no longer as an obligation. With the planned establishment of the regional level, the role of larger municipalities will be replaced by regions. Slovenian mentality to maintain status quo prevailed again. The concerned Act was not implemented. As far as museums are concerned it was replaced by the new Cultural Heritage Protection Act, 2008 and its novel from December 2008 that postponed changes until 1 January 2010  (see chapter 5.3.3). Although the regions haven t been established yet the Ministry of Culture is continuing with  funding of rest of these 40 institutions (mainly theatres) too. It accepted an interpretation that this legal provision allows to wait until the regional legislation is adopted. 

Chapter updated: 17-02-2009