At its session today the government approved draft amendments to four tax laws that represent a further step towards tax optimisation. After reducing the tax on annual leave allowance, the new measures will further reduce taxes on labour, which will increase the competitiveness of the Slovenian business environment, maintain a stable economic environment and contribute to long-term sustainable economic growth. The proposals include lowering the tax rate in the second and third income tax bands, increasing general tax allowances, the introduction of linear additional general tax allowances and the introduction of a 7% minimum corporate tax rate. One of our guidelines in drafting the proposals was to prevent a negative effect on the disposable incomes of minimum wage workers.

At today's session the Slovenian government also adopted the Draft Act amending the Pension and Disability Insurance Act. The proposed legislative changes, which are fully harmonised with our social partners and approved by the Economic and Social Council, pursue two basic objectives: extending working lives and providing sufficient income for safe ageing, and consequently improving the standard of living of all beneficiaries of pension and disability insurance. Particular attention was paid to increasing the social security of the most vulnerable groups within the pension system. The main legislative changes relating to compulsory pension and disability insurance include: increasing the assessment rate and thus the social security of beneficiaries of the lowest old age, disability and family pensions and compensation from disability insurance, incentives to remain insured, and ensuring that pensioners can receive the majority of their pensions while simultaneously working.

The Government also defined the text of the Draft Act amending the Labour Market Act. The proposed legislative amendment includes increasing the minimum gross amount of unemployment compensation from EUR 350 to EUR 530.19. This will put unemployment compensation at the same level as the minimum basic income, which currently sits at EUR 402 net. In order to activate older unemployed persons, the conditions for determining the duration of monetary compensation for those persons have been changed. Thus monetary compensation for 19 months is planned for policyholders above 53 years of age who meet the condition of an insurance period of more than 25 years, and monetary compensation for 25 months is proposed for policyholders older than 58 with an insurance period of more than 28 years.

The government adopted a draft amendment to the text of the Aviation Act. The legislative amendments allow for the establishing of regular international air transport as a compulsory commercial public service in the Slovenian legal order, in line with the provisions of the Regulation on implementation of Regulation (EC) No 1008/2008 on common rules for the operation of air services in the Community and the Interpretative guidelines on Regulation (EC)1008/2008 – Rules on Ownership and Control of EU air carriers. This means that regular international air transport will be conducted under market conditions, and that a commercial public service could be established for individual routes only in exceptional cases where the market would be shown to be ineffective and Slovenia would be deprived of important air routes.