Anti-Corruption and Integrity Outlook 2024 – Country Notes: Slovenia

Contextual factors

 

State structure	Executive power	Legislative system	Legal system
Unitary	Parliamentary	Bicameral	Civil Law

Strategy and institutions on anti-corruption and public integrity

The Commission for the Prevention of Corruption is an independent state body responsible for strengthening and safeguarding the rule of law with regards to corruption, as enshrined in the Integrity and Prevention of Corruption Act. It supervises various public integrity and anti-corruption issues, such as overseeing conflict-of-interest and lobbying activities.

The Budget Supervision Office of the Ministry of Finance is the central government body responsible for developing the internal control (IC) and internal audit (IA) systems and promoting IC and IA methodologies based on internal standards. Additionally, the Court of Audit is the independent body overseeing the financing of political parties and election campaigns, and the Information Commissioner is the independent supervisory body responsible for public information that conducts inspections on compliance with regulations on access to information.

Overview

 

Greatest strengths	Areas to improve
Political finance – regulation	Anti-corruption strategy
Corruption risk management and audit	Conflict of interest - implementation
Lobbying	Political finance - implementation

Anti-corruption strategy

Slovenia has not yet adopted a comprehensive national strategy on public integrity risks. The Resolution on Prevention of Corruption of the Republic of Slovenia (hereinafter: the resolution) was finalised in November 2023 but is awaiting the adoption by the Government and the National Assembly. As a national anti-corruption strategy, the resolution defines strategic goals for mitigating corruption and integrity risks within the public sector, as well as the private sector and civil society organisations. The Resolution will be implemented through an action plan which has to be adopted within three months after the adoption of the resolution.

Corruption risk management and audit

As measured against OECD standards on risk management, which includes internal control and internal audit, Slovenia is among the top performers, fulfilling 92% of criteria for regulations and 60% for practice, compared to the OECD average of 67% and 33%, respectively.

The regulatory framework defines internal control and internal audit according to international standards, the managerial responsibility regarding the implementation of IC and IA, reporting activities, the operational arrangements for IA, and allows these arrangements to differ depending on the type and size of the institutions. Additionally, public integrity risks are explicitly addressed in the risk management framework and every public body is required to prepare risk registers or fraud risk profiles. In terms of practice, the Budget Supervision Office has conducted government wide reviews of IC and IA systems annually during the last three years, but the annual reports do not present the implementation rates of IA recommendations. All central government bodies have internal audit units staffed according to regulations, and their heads systematically adopt audit charters but not audit procedure manuals. Finally, all central budget organisations are covered by internal audit and 70% have been audited in the past five years.

Lobbying

As measured against OECD standards on lobbying, Slovenia is among the top performers, fulfilling 75% of criteria for regulations and 78% for practice, compared to the OECD average of 38% and 35%, respectively.

The regulatory framework defines lobbyists and lobbying activities, defines proportional sanctions for breaches of lobbying provisions, and establishes cooling off periods for public officials but not for lobbyists. In practice, all criteria are fulfilled except for practical examples presented in the code of conduct regulating interactions between public officials and lobbyists, and the lobbying register does not include information on budget/expenses for lobbying activities.

Conflict of interest

As measured against OECD standards on conflict of interest, Slovenia is among the top performers for regulations, fulfilling 89% of criteria compared to the OECD average of 76%, but data has not been provided on practice.

The regulatory framework contains a list of incompatibilities between public functions and other public or private activities, defines circumstances and relationships that can lead to conflict of interest and the obligation for public officials to manage them, and defines institutional responsibilities for submission, compliance and content verification. Ministers, members of parliament, judges and top-tier civil servants are legally required to declare their assets, but members of the Judicial Council, which appoint and dismiss presidents of courts, are not.

Political finance

As measured against OECD standards on political finance, Slovenia is a top performer for regulations as it fulfils 100% of criteria compared to the OECD average of 73%, but data has not been provided on practice.

The regulatory safeguards in place include the requirement for political parties to publish annual and election campaign financial reports, complete bans on anonymous donations and donations from publicly owned enterprises, from foreign states and foreign enterprises, and proportional sanctions for breaches of provisions on the financing of political parties and election campaigns.

Transparency of public information

As measured against OECD standards on public information, which includes access to information and open data, Slovenia performs strongly on regulations, fulfilling 78% of criteria, and is a top performer on practice, fulfilling 81% of criteria, compared to the OECD average of 67% and 62%, respectively.

The regulatory framework ensures that everyone has the right to access public information and can appeal to an independent body if the request is rejected, and establishes that government data is “open by default”. However, criteria on regulations that are not fulfilled include a list of mandatory datasets to be disclosed, and the requirement to provide the information in the requested format. In practice, most standard datasets are publicly available, except ministers’ agendas, interest declarations of the top-two tiers of public employees and salaries of individual senior civil servants.