On a working visit to Paris, foreign minister Miro Cerar and his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian signed a new action plan for strategic partnership between their two countries for the 2019 to 2022 period.

Slovenians from neighbouring countries and from around the world embarked on the traditional visit to the homeland on Wednesday for the start of the Welcome Home event. The main part of the event will take place on Saturday in Radovljica, but the meeting opened on Wednesday with football matches in Brdo pri Kranju.

At today’s session the government adopted an itemisation of budget expenditure by individual budget spending unit. In line with the approved fiscal framework, the ceiling on state budget expenditure was set at EUR 10.45 billion for 2020 and EUR 10.46 billion for 2021. The government is drafting the budget with welfare and stability in mind, but will also take account of the fiscal rule.

Minister for Development, Strategic Projects and Cohesion Dr. Iztok Purič gave opening remarks at today’s conference Systemic Design for Circular Policy-making, an interregional dissemination event organised by the Retrace project partner from Slovenia, Government Office for Development and European Cohesion Policy. The event marked the closing stage of the project which is funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the Interreg Europe Programme.

Foreign Minister Dr Miro Cerar is paying an official one-day visit to Paris today, where he will meet French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and OECD Secretary-General Ángel Gurría, with whom he will discuss the challenges of modern-day societies, which are driven by digital transformation, climate change, artificial intelligence, education, ageing of the population and the impact on the labour market.

Foreign Minister Dr Miro Cerar and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian signed the new French–Slovenian Strategic Partnership Action Plan for 2019–2022 in Paris today. Minister Cerar is paying a working visit to France at the invitation of his French counterpart.

State Secretary Simona Leskovar participated in a ministerial meeting of the Ukraine Reform Conference, hosted by the Canadian and Ukrainian governments. She commended the progress achieved by Ukraine and called for further efforts in implementing necessary reforms, desired and indeed demanded by the Ukrainian people, and assured Slovenia’s support to this end.

At the opening ceremony of the new production line of Renault’s model BJA (the fifth generation of the Clio), Prime Minister Marjan Šarec honoured the official start of serial production of the aforementioned vehicle at Revoz in Novo Mesto with an address. The Slovenian Government has provided Revoz with a financial incentive amounting to EUR 6 million for the implementation of this project.

Slovenia is in 16th place among the 28 EU member states in the EU's Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), being above the average only in digital public services (14th). Slovenia performs particularly well in the access to open data and eHealth services, where it ranks sixth.

Protocols on the plenary sessions of the Ljubljana Credit Bank management board for the period between 1926 and 1932 contain caligraphically recorded discussions, reflections and findings of the members of the management board of the first "truly Slovenian" bank. Unlike printed annual reports, which were stuffed with numbers, these records reveal a more personal and direct testimonies and witnessing of the events. Reading them can easily take us 90 years back. We find out, for example, that the management of the bank at the start of 1930 was more worried about "abnormal weather" of the past year than about the American stock market crash.

Austria, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden attach the utmost importance to the preservation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA), signed by Iran and unanimously endorsed by the UN Security Council, as a key instrument for the non-proliferation regime and a major contribution to stability in the region.

Two years after the entry into force of the arbitral award, the Slovenian government’s position remains unchanged. Pursuant to Article 7 of the Arbitration Agreement, the award of the Arbitral Tribunal (29 June 2017) is binding on both countries and constitutes a definitive settlement of the border dispute.

Prime Minister Marjan Šarec is on an official visit to the Vatican today. This morning he had a private audience with Pope Francis. He also had a meeting with Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin.

Slovenian Prime Minister Marjan Šarec was today on an official visit to the Vatican, where this morning he had a private audience with Pope Francis and a meeting with Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin.

Minister Dr Cerar today met with Andreas Norlén, Speaker of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Sweden, who is paying an official visit to Slovenia between the 25 and the 27 of June at the invitation of Dejan Židan, the President of the Slovenian National Assembly. In their talks, the two high officials reaffirmed the excellent bilateral relations and expressed their mutual determination to further strengthen cooperation in various fields of common interest, both within the EU and other international forums.

European Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc has symbolically presented to Infrastructure Minister Alenka Bratušek a check of EUR 109 million in EU funds Slovenia secured for a rail expansion between the port of Koper and the inland hub Divača.

Dobran Božič, the State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, concluded his three-day visit to Israel today, accompanied by a Slovenian business delegation of seventeen representatives from thirteen hi-tech start-up companies.

The prime minister is in Brussels for the ordinary meeting of the European Council. In the afternoon of the first day of the meeting the leaders discussed the adoption of the EU’s strategic agenda for 2019-2024, where the main focus was on climate change, the 2021-2027 multiannual financial framework, and EU enlargement. The first day of the meeting ended with a working dinner, where there were discussions of nominations for the top positions in EU institutions for the next institutional cycle.

Bled today hosted the 15th plenary session of the Intergovernmental Slovenian-Russian Commission on Trade and Economic and Scientific-Technical Cooperation, headed by Slovenian Foreign Minister Dr Miroslav Cerar and Russian Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media Konstantin Noskov.

The Jožef Stefan Institute and the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning have issued the second Climate Mirror for Slovenia.