Amendments to the Promotion of Balanced Regional Development Act promote regional projects

15. 11. 2023

Ministry of Cohesion and Regional Development

The amendments to the Act also aim to strengthen existing development regions. “We want to see a more balanced development in development regions and reduce the development gap of less developed areas. The amendments aim to provide a legal basis for the country to delegate more tasks to development regions to be responsible for more than just the absorption of EU funds and to define how to ensure adequate resources for their operation.”

Državna sekretarka Andreja Katič je svetnice in svetnike Državnega sveta seznanila z izhodišči sprememb Zakona o skladnem regionalnem razvoju — State Secretary Andreja Katič | Author Benjamin Beci/Fixmedia

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State Secretary Andreja Katič attended the 11^th regular session of the National Council in Slovenska Bistrica, where she briefed the members of the National Council on the amendments to the Promotion of Balanced Regional Development Act, which the Ministry of Cohesion and Regional Development is preparing.

She underlined that regional development strategy has been reintroduced in the amendments to the Act, with the aim of recognising the importance of regional development and involving all ministries in development. “By reintroducing the regional development strategy to the Act, we want to give regional development the necessary weight and monitor and evaluate it more effectively. We believe that the Act should regulate the monitoring and evaluation of regional policy more clearly and adequately so that we can effectively monitor and evaluate the results of regional development with quality indicators and, on this basis, plan regional policy measures properly and in due time.”

By amending the existing Act, the Ministry aims to strengthen the regions’ decision-making power by selecting the most relevant regional projects. The aim of the amendments is to enable other ministries to play a more active role in regional policy implementation.

The State Secretary presented the planned timeline for drafting the amendments to the Act. Draft amendments are expected to be ready in January 2024, after which the text will be coordinated with representatives of associations of municipalities and other stakeholders, and in late spring 2024, the draft law will be submitted for consideration to the Government and then to the National Assembly.