STA, 10 November 2021 - The National Assembly changed the law on the establishment of municipalities to grant Krško the status of urban municipality in a 65:11 vote on Wednesday. Krško has thus joined Slovenia's eleven urban municipalities, the biggest of which are Ljubljana and Maribor.
The proposal for the status change was filed in September by opposition National Party (SNS) MP Dušan Šiško, who today stressed Krško was the geographic, economic, transport, administrative and cultural centre of Posavje region.
It has many development and administrative services, and three big power stations, including the Krško N-plant, which also makes it the country's energy centre.
With some 26,000 residents, Krško, which lies in the east on the border with Croatia, is one of the smaller urban municipalities.
With a population of two million, Slovenia has 212 municipalities, of which 12 urban ones - also Kranj, Koper, Celje, Novo Mesto, Velenje, Nova Gorica, Ptuj, Murska Sobota and Slovenj Gradec.
While Ljubljana is the biggest with 294,000 residents and Maribor has also more than 100,000 residents, Slovenj Gradec is the smallest with around 16,600, 2019 statistics shows.
Under local government legislation, an urban municipality must have a town with at least 20,000 residents and at least 15,000 jobs, half of which must be in services and the knowledge-based economy.
It must be a geographic, economic and cultural centre of its area, and the state can delegate some services related to urban development onto it.
