Slovenia factfile

(LJUBLJANA) - Slovenia, which holds parliamentary elections on Sunday, was one of the first republics to break away from federal Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and is the only one to have so far joined the European Union.

Key facts:

- GEOGRAPHY: Located on the southeastern fringes of the Alps with a short coastline on the Adriatic Sea, Slovenia has borders with Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia. At 20,273 square kilometres (7,827 square miles), it is half the size of Switzerland.

- POPULATION: Two million, of whom 89 percent are ethnic Slovenes and around 10 percent from other former Yugoslav republics. There are also small Italian and Hungarian minorities.

- RELIGION: Catholic majority.

- LANGUAGE: Slovenian.

- CAPITAL: Ljubljana.

- HISTORY: The Slovenians, a Slavic people, settled the area in the 6th century, before becoming part of the Habsburg empire in the 13th century.

Nationalist movements grew in the 1800s and when the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed after World War I, Slovenia became part of a kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, renamed Yugoslavia in 1929.

Occupied by the Axis powers during World War II, it joined at the war's end the new republic of Yugoslavia, loosely allied with the communist Eastern bloc.

Slovenia was the most prosperous of the Yugoslav republics but the demise of the Soviet Union in 1990-91 sparked the bloody process that was to break Yugoslavia apart.

First democratic elections were held in 1990, leading to a new government, and in a referendum that same year Slovenians voted massively for independence, which was declared in June 1991.

This was immediately followed by a 10-day war with the federal Yugoslav Army, after which Slovenia finally broke away, the first of the republics to do so, avoiding much of the suffering experienced by the others in ensuing wars.

In 2004, Slovenia joined both the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

- POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS: Slovenia is a parliamentary democracy with a strong directly-elected lower house -- the 90-seat National Assembly, elected to four-year terms -- and an advisory upper house whose members are appointed by interest groups and regions.

The executive is headed by a president -- currently Danilo Turk, since 2007 -- directly elected every five years but with mainly ceremonial duties.

The outgoing assembly was dominated by the Social Democratic Party (SD, former communist), but a crisis over pension reform led to the coalition government losing its majority, whereupon President Turk called early elections in September.

- ECONOMY AND RESOURCES: Services account for around 63 percent of output, with industry making up some 34 percent.

Slovenia depends heavily on exports, mainly to other EU countries, and has suffered heavily in the financial crises of the past three years.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development classifies it as a high-income country, but gross domestic product fell by 8.1 percent in 2009 and has only partially recovered since.

Unemployment stood at 11.5 percent in September.

Slovenia joined the eurozone on January 1, 2007.

- GOVERNMENT WEBSITE: www.gov.si