STA, 1 April 2022 - Currently, 268 Ukrainian children are enrolled in 113 Slovenian schools. Next week, they will be joined by the children staying at the Logatec and Debeli Rtič refugee centres. According to Education Minister Simona Kustec, schools have shown a great deal of understanding and care in accepting the new students.

She thanked all head teachers, staff, children and their parents in Grosuplje today for "understanding how important it is to open the doors of schools to give children the opportunity to socialise in a safe and warm second home".

The Education Institute has drawn up additional guidelines regarding the inclusion of Ukrainian children to schools, which Kustec said would be forwarded to schools next week.

Next week, the number of Ukrainian children attending Slovenian schools is to raise to 366 as the children from the Logatec and Debeli Rtič facilities are enrolled in education as well. In Logatec, there are currently 125 children, some of whom will attend the primary school in Horjul due to limited capacities in Logatec.

Some schools are also full on the coast, so children from Debeli Rtič will go to the near-by Ankaran as well as Hrvatini primary schools.

Ukrainian children attend school all over the country, but most of them are in central Slovenia, Primorska in the south-west, and Podravska and Prekmurje in the north-east.

Currently, most children from Ukraine attend the primary school in Ormož, where many Slovenian companies cooperated with Ukrainians.

All Ukrainian children are entitled to a free school meal and free textbook rental.

At the beginning of the school year, 228 children from Ukraine were enrolled in Slovenian schools, as their parents already lived in Slovenia.

Currently, seven students attend four secondary schools in Slovenia.

Ukrainian children have also access to public music schools, which are currently attended by four Ukrainians. 42 Ukrainian children attend Slovenian kindergartens.

The University of Ljubljana, the country's largest, said in a press release that there are currently 38 Ukrainian students studying at their faculties.

For the 2022/2023 academic year, the university has received 150 applications for enrolment from Ukraine, with the greatest interest in the Faculty of Medicine.

Ukrainian students can also study at the University of Maribor.

STA, 31 March 2022 - Infrastructure Minister Jernej Vrtovec has pledged that a bypass road would be built to relieve Škofljica, a town just south-east of Ljubljana, of traffic on the very busy Ljubljana-Kočevje road, which cuts through the town centre.

He said as he met Mayor Ivan Jordan in Škofljica on Thursday that the new road would be sited together with a second track planned on the Ljubljana-Ivančna Gorica railway.

Vrtovec could not say where exactly the new road would run, telling the STA that it was premature to say that "but the important thing is that we take steps forward".

The mayor was happy with the meeting, saying: "This is the first time we talked openly. I outlined out problems to the minister and he pledged to solve them if he remains minister" after the general election.

Vrtovec also discussed some other infrastructure projects in the area before the government visits the entire southern part of Central Slovenia on Friday.

He also said that his ministry and the municipality of Grosuplje would sign a EUR 9 million contract to co-finance various projects, from crossroads to cycling routes.

STA, 31 March 2022 - The Ukrainian security forces have beefed up security in the Kyiv street where the Slovenian Embassy and several other embassies are located, so charge d'affaires at the Slovenian Embassy Boštjan Lesjak again raised the Slovenian flag after reporting it had to be removed because it looks too similar to the Russian flag.

The Slovenian Foreign Ministry explained for the STA today that the flag had been removed by the Ukrainian authorities because of its similarity with the Russian flag on Monday, 21 March - six days after PM Janez Janša and his Polish and Czech counterparts visited Kyiv. The EU flag remained up.

After arriving in Kyiv on 27 March, Lesjak raised it again as a symbolic gesture marking the reopening of the Slovenian Embassy only to be asked by the Ukrainian security authorities and police patrolling the area to temporarily remove it for security reasons because "it could incite unwanted incidents due to its similarity with the Russian flag".

In the meantime, security was beefed up, so Slovenia's interim charge d'affaires again raised the flag and now it is to stay there.

The ministry added that the Slovenian Embassy was obligated to follow the instructions of local security forces and provide for the safety of the embassy employees.

Lesjak told public broadcaster RTV Slovenija last night that he had to remove the Slovenian flag after two days. "When we arrived in Kyiv, it was quite windy and when we proudly hoisted back the Slovenian and European flags, they fluttered nicely in the wind." But when the wind stopped, the flags dropped and members of the national guard and later the police came to ask whether the Slovenian flag could be removed temporarily "because it resembles the Russian flag too much", the diplomat said.

Opposition SocDem MP Matjaž Nemec labelled this a "capitulation" of Prime Minister Janez Janša's diplomacy earlier today, noting that "there is no state without symbols and there is no state without a flag".

STA, 31 March 2022 - Prime Minister Janez Janša and his Croatian counterpart Andrej Plenković talked about cooperation in gas supply and the Krško nuclear power plant as they met in Zagreb on Monday. Talks will be resumed by the ministers in charge next week.

Potential for concrete cooperation will be discussed by Slovenian Infrastructure Minister Jernej Vrtovec and Croatian Economy Minister Tomislav Čorić as they meet in Zagreb next Monday.

The ministers will talk about expanding the pipeline from Lučko, a Zagreb suburb, through Zabok, north of Zagreb, to Rogatec in Slovenia. They will also discuss further cooperation on the Krško N-plant, which is owned jointly by the two countries.

"We're trying to find a common approach to supply, transport routes and the other necessary logistic. Gas, of course, is a small part of the energy we need for a normal life in Europe. Nuclear energy is also very important," said Janša.

The two countries see plenty of potential to cooperate in both energy areas when it comes to satisfying the needs of Slovenia as well as Croatia, he added.

"A large part of Europe is fully or partly dependent on energy imports from Russia, and anything that represents an alternative to these imports and dependency is a European priority at the moment," said Janša.

Slovenia would like to have enough capacities to be energy self-sufficient even in case of difficulties on the energy market. "As for our interest to lease capacities, the capacities that have been leased are leased, we're interested in additional capacities," said Janša when asked about lease of Croatian capacities.

Slovenia needs about a billion cubic metres of gas a year. The capacity of the gas pipeline from Lučko to Rogatec would be 270 million m3, which Janša said represented an important share of Slovenian gas supply.

While Slovenia is short of gas, Croatia is short of electricity. The Croatian government expressed readiness to take part in the construction of a second reactor in Krško following the model of cooperation so far.

Janša said the relevant government departments would look into potential for cooperation to jointly invest in the second reactor.

The prime ministers also talked about other bilateral issues, including the fishing regime in the Bay of Piran. Plenković said the two countries deepened their relationship in recent years and would also ease them on that point so that fishers would not be fined by Croatian or Slovenian police.

Since Slovenia started implementing the border arbitration award declared by the arbitration tribunal in June 2017 the following year Slovenian police have fined vessels entering waters awarded to Slovenia illegally, while Croatia has been fining Slovenian vessels fishing in the part of the bay it continues to claim as its own because it does not recognise the border award.

The two prime ministers also touched on the refugee crisis with Janša expressing Slovenia's readiness to accept the number of Ukrainian refugees in proportion to its size and the size of its population.

"There're no tensions, all the problems that exist, even if they have for several years, we're solving quietly and to the satisfaction of both governments and nations," said Plenković.

He thanked Slovenia for supporting Croatia in joining the EU, Schengen zone and the efforts to become a member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

"You have all the support for membership in the integrations that Slovenia is already a member of and Croatia is still a candidate country for," said Janša.

The prime ministers also talked about cooperation in trade and tourism. The volume of bilateral trade has reached EUR 5.6 billion. Plenković noted that that 1,166,000 Slovenian tourists holidayed in Croatia last year.

This was the eighth time that Janša and Plenković have met in the past two years.

Ljubljana, 31 March 2022 - Slovenia's charge d'affaires at the embassy in Kyiv Boštjan Lesjak, who arrived in Kyiv on Sunday, had to take down the Slovenian flag in front of the embassy because it looks too similar to Russia's flag.

"When we arrived in Kyiv it was quite windy and when we proudly hoisted back the Slovenian and European flag, they fluttered nicely in the wind," he told TV Slovenija late on Wednesday.

But when the wind stopped, the flags dropped and members of the national guard and later the police came and asked whether the Slovenian flag can be removed temporarily "because it is too much like the Russian flag," he said.

Lesjak said safety was well taken care of otherwise by the official representatives of the Ukrainian authorities. "We are accommodated in a nearby hotel, where we have the basic conditions to live and work," he said.

Lesjak regularly reports to Slovenian Ambassador Tomaž Mencin, who works out of the Polish city of Rzeszow close to the border with Ukraine.

His main contacts are the ambassadors of Poland and the Holy See, who never left Kyiv.

Slovenia reopened the embassy in Kyiv as a sign of support for Ukraine. Lesjak, a lieutenant colonel who previously worked at the Defence Ministry, volunteered for the job.

STA, 29 March 2022 - Izola Mayor Danilo Markočič has been charged with abuse of office in a case that led to the resignation of Aleksandra Pivec as agriculture minister in the autumn of 2020, regional paper Primorske Novice reported on Tuesday.

The charges, filed at the end of last year, concern a hotel bill that the municipality paid for Pivec and her sons during what was supposed to be an official function.

Markočič told the paper he had no knowledge of the charges and said that the former minister had reimbursed the municipality for the hotel bill.

The paper says Pivec is not among those charged, but the investigation showed payment of her bill was against the law.

The revelation that Pivec stayed with her sons in a hotel paid for by the municipality caused a political scandal after it was first revealed in the summer of 2020.

Pivec lost her job first as leader of the Pensioners' Party (DeSUS), which ended up imploding, and later as agriculture minister.

She left politics only briefly, having last year established a new party, Our Land, which has entered the election race.

STA, 28 March 2022 - Prime Minister Janez Janša and his Croatian counterpart Andrej Plenković talked about cooperation in gas supply and the Krško nuclear power plant as they met in Zagreb on Monday. Talks will be resumed by the ministers in charge next week.

Potential for concrete cooperation will be discussed by Slovenian Infrastructure Minister Jernej Vrtovec and Croatian Economy Minister Tomislav Čorić as they meet in Zagreb next Monday.

The ministers will talk about expanding the pipeline from Lučko, a Zagreb suburb, to Zalog, on the eastern outskirts of Ljubljana, and to Logatec, south-west of the Slovenian capital. They will also discuss further cooperation on the Krško N-plant, which is owned jointly by the two countries.

"We're trying to find a common approach to supply, transport routes and the other necessary logistic. Gas, of course, is a small part of the energy we need for a normal life in Europe. Nuclear energy is also very important," said Janša.

The two countries see plenty of potential to cooperate in both energy areas when it comes to satisfying the needs of Slovenia as well as Croatia, he added.

Predsednik vlade ?? @JJansaSDS je prispel v Zagreb, kjer bo opravil delovno srečanje s predsednikom hrvaške vlade ?? @AndrejPlenkovic. pic.twitter.com/7CeUySOd6t

— Vlada Republike Slovenije (@vladaRS) March 28, 2022

"A large part of Europe is fully or partly dependent on energy imports from Russia, and anything that represents an alternative to these imports and dependency is a European priority at the moment," said Janša.

Slovenia would like to have enough capacities to be energy self-sufficient even in case of difficulties on the energy market. "As for our interest to lease capacities, the capacities that have been leased are leased, we're interested in additional capacities," said Janša when asked about lease of Croatian capacities.

Slovenia needs about a billion cubic metres of gas a year. The capacity of the gas pipeline from Lučko to Logatec would be 270 million m3, which Janša said represented an important share of Slovenian gas supply.

While Slovenia is short of gas, Croatia is short of electricity. The Croatian government expressed readiness to take part in the construction of a second reactor in Krško following the model of cooperation so far.

Janša said the relevant government departments would look into potential for cooperation to jointly invest in the second reactor.

The prime ministers also talked about other bilateral issues, including the fishing regime in the Bay of Piran. Plenković said the two countries deepened their relationship in recent years and would also ease them on that point so that fishers would not be fined by Croatian or Slovenian police.

Since Slovenia started implementing the border arbitration award declared by the arbitration tribunal in June 2017 the following year Slovenian police have fined vessels entering waters awarded to Slovenia illegally, while Croatia has been fining Slovenian vessels fishing in the part of the bay it continues to claim as its own because it does not recognise the border award.

The two prime ministers also touched on the refugee crisis with Janša expressing Slovenia's readiness to accept the number of Ukrainian refugees in proportion to its size and the size of its population.

"There're no tensions, all the problems that exist, even if they have for several years, we're solving quietly and to the satisfaction of both governments and nations," said Plenković.

He thanked Slovenia for supporting Croatia in joining the EU, Schengen zone and the efforts to become a member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

"You have all the support for membership in the integrations that Slovenia is already a member of and Croatia is still a candidate country for," said Janša.

The prime ministers also talked about cooperation in trade and tourism. The volume of bilateral trade has reached EUR 5.6 billion. Plenković noted that some 1,166,000 Slovenian tourists holidayed in Croatia last year.

This was the eighth time that Janša and Plenković have met in the past two years.

STA, 28 March 2022 - Some 7,000 refugees from Ukraine have so far applied for temporary protection in Slovenia, Franc Kangler, a state secretary at the Interior Ministry, told reporters during a session of EU Home Affairs Council in Brussels on Monday.

At the session, Ylva Johansson, the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, presented an index showing the pressure of the refugee crisis resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine on EU countries. Poland currently faces the biggest pressure, followed by Austria and the Czech Republic.

The commissioner did not mention Slovenia specifically, Kangler said at a press conference in Brussels while the ministerial was still under way.

He said some 7,000 Ukrainian refugees had asked for temporary protection in Slovenia, which figure did not include those who register with their relatives at police stations.

Kangler said that the latter often left Slovenia, registered in Austria and then returned to Slovenia. He noted the importance of single registry at the European level.

Roughly 50,000 people from Ukraine have crossed Slovenia, most of them heading on to Italy, France and Spain, according to the state secretary.

Kangler discussed the issue with Croatian Interior Minister Davor Božinović, who told him there were roughly 15,000 Ukrainian refugees in Croatia, which meant the situation in Slovenia was comparable to Croatia's.

Božinović later told Croatian reporters that some 11,000 Ukrainian refugees had applied for temporary protection in Croatia.

The home affairs officials today also discussed helping Moldova, where some 360,000 people have fled the war in Ukraine. Kangler said the government needed yet to take a decision on Slovenia accepting refugees from Moldova.

One of the topics under discussion was financial support for EU countries to care for refugees. By activating the temporary protection regulation, Slovenia secured financing from the budget, said Kangler.

"However, given the burden and the number of refugees arriving in Slovenia, we would also like to try to find European funds that Slovenia could tap into," he added.

As one potential option he mentioned financing from the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund, where an additional EUR 200 million is available that is left over from last year and the year before.

At the session Kangler also offered the assistance of the Slovenian-run ITF fund in demining Ukraine after the war. Ukrainian Interior Minister Denis Monastirski called on the ministers to start thinking how Europe would go about deactivating unexploded mines.

STA, 28 March 2022 - Slovenia's interim chargé d'affaires Boštjan Lesjak arrived in Kyiv safely Sunday night, the Foreign Ministry said. The Slovenian Embassy in Kyiv reopened today.

According to the ministry, Lesjak said upon arrival that the town was deserted, and that alarms and detonations could be heard in the distance but other than that life was normal for those who stayed in the Ukrainian capital.

Slovenia's Ambassador to Ukraine Tomaž Mencin continues with his work from Rzeszow, a town on the Polish-Ukrainian border where most other ambassadors operate from, the ministry said.

Boštjan Lesjak je varno prispel v Kijev, kjer bo začel z delom začasnega odpravnika poslov R Slovenije ?? v Ukrajini ??.

“Mesto je prazno, slišijo se alarmi in detonacije v daljavi, sicer pa življenje za tiste, ki so ostali v prestolnici, poteka normalno,” je dejal ob prihodu. pic.twitter.com/4DA0iI0jwc

— MFA Slovenia (@MZZRS) March 27, 2022

The ministry told the STA today that Lesjak was accompanied by another official, but no more information was provided.

Prime Minister Janez Janša said in a tweet this morning that the Slovenian Embassy had reopened and that a Slovenian team was in Kyiv.

"We are back. The Slovenian and European flags flutter again in front of the Slovenian Embassy in Kyiv. When the team travelled to the Ukrainian capital yesterday, they saw many civilians returning to the city," he tweeted.

STA, 26 March 2022 - Slovenia's Žiga Jelar, Peter Prevc, Timi Zajc and Anže Lanišek won the last Ski Jumping World Cup team event of the season held in Slovenia's Planica on Saturday before some 20,000 spectators. Slovenia led already after the first series, 15.6 points ahead of Norway.

Norway, whose Halvor Egner Granerud managed a jump of 242 metres, came second as Lanišek did not shy away of Granerud's challenge and jumped 237.5 metres.

With 1,601.1 points, the Slovenian team outperformed Norway by 24.2 points and by 56.9 points third-placed Austria, whose Stefan Kraft put on a great performance.

The Slovenian men jumpers brought Slovenia the 84th World Cup victory, of which 72 have been individual wins and 12 team wins.

Peter Prevc has been part of 12 winning teams, and is also a Slovenian record holder in individual event wins, managing as many as 23.

"I'm glad that the boys have jumped well, but we shouldn't take such achievements for granted," chief coach Robert Hrgota told public broadcaster TV Slovenija.

He said "that's been a lot of hard work throughout the season to come to such successes."

Lanišek said "there had been a lot of pressure with everyone saying to us 'win, win!' These are the successes we live for, so we work hard and we'll always remember these moments."

"Each of us did his best and I'm thrilled. I think we're living our dreams. This is phenomenal!" said Jelar, who in the first group jumped after Norway's Marius Lindvik, the ski flying world champion and the best individual jumper today.

The World Cup season finale at Planica will conclude on Sunday with an individual event featuring the top 30 jumpers in the overall standings.