Slovenia upper house vetoes budget plans, challenges government

The Slovenian National Council, the upper house of parliament, on Thursday vetoed 2020 and 2021 budget plans, passed by parliament last week, challenging the minority center-left government. The council argued that local municipalities should get more money from the budget. As a consequence, the parliament will, in the coming weeks, have to adopt the budget plans once again with an absolute majority in order for them to be enforced.

The government only holds 43 out of 90 seats in parliament but Prime Minister Marjan Sarec had said he expected the budgets to get sufficient support once again, as the opposition Slovenian Nationalist Party, which has four seats, had also promised to back the budget plans. Finance Minister Andrej Bertoncelj indicated last week that he would step down if the budgets were not passed.

Slovenia plans a budget surplus of 0.8% of GDP in 2020 and 1.2% in 2021 versus a surplus of some 0.8% seen this year.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)