Slovenia Unitary state

History and trends

Slovenia is a semi-presidential Republic. Its Constitution was adopted on 23 December 1990.

Slovenia was formerly part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (created 1 December 1918), which would later become Yugoslavia. When Yugoslavia was invaded in April 1941, the Slovene portion was divided between Germany, Italy and Hungary.

Following the victory of the Tito-supporting communists, the Republic of Slovenia became part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Slovenia and Croatia declared independence on 25 June 1991. The Yugoslav federal government, led by Croat Ante Marković, opposed the independence declarations and deployed the federal army. Following a brief battle between the Slovene home defence forces and the Yugoslav People’s Army (Jugoslovenska narodna armija, or JNA), a ceasefire agreement on 28 June 1991 secured a three-month truce. But, in October that year, Slovakia once again asserted its intention to declare independence and the EU arbitration body ruled in its favour. Germany officially recognised Slovenia as an independent, sovereign state in December. Then, in January 1992, a further 30-or-so countries followed suit, including all EU Member States.

Slovenia’s system of local government is based on Chapter V of the Constitution of Slovenia, entitled “Self-government”.

The country has just one tier of local government. It is divided into 212 municipalities (občine), 11 of which are classed as urban municipalities.

All of the municipalities are named in Slovenian, the country’s first official language. Hungarian is the second official language in three municipalities in the Prekmurje region: Dobrovnik (Dobrónak), Hodoš (Hodos) and Lendava (Lendva). Italian is the second official language in the three coastal municipalities of Izola (Isola), Koper (Capodistria) and Piran (Pirano).

Slovenia’s 212 municipalities (including 11 urban municipalities) remain the only territorial subdivisions.

Slovenia is also divided into eight historical (but unofficial) regions.

The Slovene government has long had plans to create new, official administrative regions (around a dozen in total).

• NUTS 2 macro-regions:

The macro-region, or “cohesion region”, is a European subdivision of Slovenia used by Eurostat, the EU’s statistical information provider, under its Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS). It corresponds to the second tier (NUTS 2) level, the first subdivision level used by Eurostat for Slovenia. There are two such regions: East Slovenia and West Slovenia.

The administrative unit is another European subdivision of Slovenia, corresponding to LAU level 1. There are 58 in total.