In the ongoing regular session Slovenia's parliament will be deliberating, with a considerable delay, also on the ombudsman's annual report for 1997, which has been waiting on the parliamentary benches for almost a year. Slovenia's national ombudsman, on the other hand, is well into finalising his annual report for 1998.

The key, system-related problems that appeared in the 1997 report were still not resolved in 1998, Slovenia's Ombudsman Ivan Bizjak said in an interview for the Slovene Press Agency. There has been no substantial progress in the area of the legislature, and the lengthy nature of legal and administrative procedures remains the feature of the ombudsman's statistics. The situation has improved in the processing of applications for citizenships and some new laws pertaining to human rights have been adopted, but the majority of them are still waiting to be prepared and passed.

Ombudsman's general assessment is that unfortunately no progress has been made in essential and most delicate areas that affect most people. That brings up again the question whether those in charge have not identified the major priority tasks regarding the issue or they have been unsuccessful in implementing them, Bizjak pointed out. In his opinion both alternatives are unacceptable as that means that the situation concerning the problems he is constantly warning of is in no way improving. At the same time one wonders about the responsibility of those who should contribute to it as it is impossible to accept the opinion that nothing can be done, the ombudsman stated.

Even good resolutions adopted by the parliament while deliberating on the annual reports for 1996 and 1997 have been implemented to a very insubstantial extent, especially those which were most concrete. As an example of this Bizjak quoted legislative priority tasks; the parliamentary commission in charge of petitions composed a list of laws that should be discussed and adopted as soon as possible, but few of them have been actually passed.

Ivan Bizjak does not expect the priorities in adopting the EU's legislation will check other legislation. He stressed the issue of human rights itself was one of the key issues in Slovenia's accession to the Union. It means human rights are no less important in the aspect of integration into the EU as those explicitly mentioned in the European programme. The legislators are obliged to do everything in their power to speed up the parliamentary procedure, Ivan Bizjak said. He expects they will ask the government to prepare the necessary legislation promptly.