Govt declares referendum on military investment inadmissible

Ljubljana – The government adopted a draft decree at a correspondence session on Monday saying that a referendum on the changes to the 2021 and 2022 budgets implementation act to allow for long-term financing of investments in the Slovenian Armed Forces would be inadmissible.

The Finance Ministry argued in a press release after the government session that under the Constitution a referendum must not be called on laws concerning taxes, customs and other levies and laws required for the implementation of the budget.

The government adopted in mid-March changes to the 2021 and 2022 budgets implementation act to allow for the investments in the Slovenian Armed Forces in line with the long-term programme of army development and mid-term defence programme after the Constitutional Court stayed in January the implementation of an act on EUR 780 million in investments in the Slovenian Armed Forces pending a decision on the constitutionality of the legislation.

An initiative by the opposition Left for a referendum on the legislative changes that would allow the investments collected 10,000 signatures at the end of March.

Left coordinator Luka Mesec said at the time that this was not a law on budget implementation but an “attempt at sticking things in the law on the budget implementation that have nothing to do with budget implementation”.

He stressed that the act on 2021 and 2022 budgets implementation had been adopted last year and was being implemented while the government had moved to change it to avoid a referendum.

The Left and the Social Democrats (SD) collected enough signatures to start referendum procedures on the act on EUR 780 million in investments in the Slovenian Armed Forces soon after the law was passed.

But the next day the coalition confirmed a decision that the referendum would be inadmissible, while later the Constitutional Court stayed the implementation of the act pending a decision on the constitutionality of the legislation.

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