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Slovenia factfile

30 November 2012
by eub2 -- last modified 30 November 2012

Slovenia, which is holding a presidential run-off on Sunday, was one of the first republics to break away from Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and is the only one so far to have joined the European Union and eurozone.


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(LJUBLJANA) - Slovenia, which is holding a presidential run-off on Sunday, was one of the first republics to break away from Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and is the only one so far to have joined the European Union and eurozone.

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. It covers 20,273 square kilometres (7,827 square miles).

- POPULATION: 2.05 million (World Bank, 2011).

- RELIGION: Catholic majority.

- LANGUAGE: Slovenian.

- CAPITAL: Ljubljana.

- HISTORY: The Slovenians, a Slavic people, settled the area in the sixth 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, toward the end of the war it joined the new republic of Yugoslavia, loosely allied with the communist Eastern bloc.

Slovenia was the most prosperous of the republics but the demise of the Soviet Union in 1990-91 sparked the bloody wars that broke Yugoslavia apart.

First democratic elections were held in 1990, and in a referendum that year Slovenians voted massively for independence, declared in June 1991.

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

In 2004, Slovenia joined both the EU and NATO.

- POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS: Slovenia is a parliamentary democracy with a directly elected lower house -- the 90-seat National Assembly, elected to four-year terms.

The executive is headed by a president -- currently Danilo Turk since 2007 and seeking re-election -- who is directly elected every five years but has mainly ceremonial duties.

The government of Borut Pahor of the ex-communist Social Democratic party lost a confidence vote in September 2011 after three years in office, leading to early elections which put a centre-right coalition, led by Prime Minister Janez Jansa, in power.

- ECONOMY AND RESOURCES: Slovenia, which joined the eurozone on January 1, 2007, was long considered a model among the countries of the former Eastern bloc which joined the EU in 2004. However it was hard hit by the world economic and financial crisis of 2008/2009.

In October the IMF said Slovenia was experiencing one of the deepest recessions in the eurozone.

Public debt grew to 47.6 percent of gross domestic product or 16.8 billion euros ($21.5 billion) in 2011, against 8.1 billion euros or 23.4 percent of GDP in 2007, before the crisis.

UNEMPLOYMENT: 11.6 percent of the working population in August 2012.

RESOURCES: minerals.

INDUSTRY: metallurgy, electronics, textiles, chemicals, industrial carpentry, mechanical construction.

- ARMED FORCES: 7,600 soldiers; 4,500 paramilitaries.

- GOVERNMENT WEBSITE: www.gov.si

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