On Monday, the deputy group of the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) submitted a proposal for an amendment to the Organization and Financing of Education Act (ZOFVI) into parliamentary procedure. With this proposal for an amendment, they want to implement the decision of the Slovenian constitutional court from four years ago, which calls for the elimination of the unconstitutionality due to the discriminatory financing of private elementary schools that carry out publicly valid programmes for schoolchildren. The proposed amendment to the financing of education act provides for the non-discriminatory financing of schools.
On 4 December 2014, the Slovenian constitutional court decided in a review of constitutionality that the first sentence of the second paragraph of Article 86 of the Organization and Financing of Education Act is unconstitutional in the part referring to publicly valid programmes of elementary education and that the National Assembly of Slovenia must correct the unconstitutionality within one year from the publication of this decision in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia. Now almost 4 years have passed since the decision of the constitutional court, but the decision has still not been implemented.
The SDS deputy group has already proposed an amendment to the act which would implement the decision of the constitutional court in the beginning of 2015. The response of the government at the time was that they are preparing a systemic solution of the act which would also resolve the decision of the constitutional court. But by the deadline given by the constitutional court, the coalition government had done nothing. Thus the SDS deputy group again proposed an act which would implement the aforementioned decision. But the coalition led by Miro Cerar, which should have acted in line with its “rule of law” programme, was again opposed. The third attempt in March 2016 ended in the same way, as did the submission of the act in February 2017.