The Government adopted the 2022 Stability Programme which, in the light of the National Assembly elections and the extraordinary macroeconomic uncertainties due to the humanitarian and economic consequences of the war in Ukraine and the establishment of an economic balance after the epidemic, only includes the no-policy-change scenario or the spontaneous policy scenario. Nevertheless, the nominal deficit by individual years is lower in the spontaneous scenario than the target values in the proportion of the gross domestic product, which are determined in the applicable Ordinance on the framework for the preparation of the general government budget for the 2022–2024 period.

The National Reform Programme is part of the documents of the European Semester, which the EU Member States draft annually. Due to the pre-election period in Slovenia, this year’s document contains an overview of key measures, reforms and investment plans adopted in the recent period. The key reforms and investments in the future period are based on the adopted Recovery and Resilience Plan, by means of which Slovenia addresses specific recommendations and challenges provided by the European Commission in its documents. Slovenia is the only EU Member State to address all specific recommendations targeting Slovenia within the European Semester in its Recovery and Resilience Plan. The reforms, other measures and the planned investments will thus address all key challenges and contribute to sound and stable economic growth.

The Government issued amendments to the Decree determining the amount of excise duty on energy products to maintain the current amount of excise duty in the next three months, i.e. from 1 May to 31 July 2022. In this way, we are trying to tackle the hardships of citizens and the business sector in the field of tax policy due to high oil prices.

The Decree fixing the excise duty level for electricity is part of the intervention measures to address higher electricity prices. The Government extended the validity of the Decree until 31 July 2022. The proposed amendment to the Decree extends the validity of the Decree fixing the excise duty level for electricity and thus the amount of excise duty for electricity for another three months, i.e. by 31 July 2022.