By: Ana Horvat /Nova24tv
On Wednesday, the second reform coalition summit took place in Brdo pri Kranju. Although the agenda included the consideration of the starting points of four reforms, they did not manage to process all of them, as they stopped at the reform that is currently causing the most trouble – the wage system in the public sector and housing policy. Thus, tax and school reform remained on the agenda.
The coalition of the Gibanje Svoboda, the Social Democrats and the Levica party discussed the reform of the wage system in the public sector and the reform of the real estate market at this year’s second coalition summit. The conclusions presented at the press conference did not go into details, only the agreed starting points were presented. They also did not want to answer journalists’ questions about more precise measures and figures. Prime Minister Robert Golob tried to explain, but things are still not clear.
We are promised what the previous government was preparing
The coalition agrees that the unified system has long been gone. The negotiations will thus serve as a basis or starting point on which all other measures within the reform will be based. The remaining steps will be presented in more detail next week, when the minutes will be prepared, and they should start with the lowest paid. The promise is actually what Janša’s government was preparing, namely several salary pillars, where comparable professions will have their own salary pillars – there will be no more uniform salary system.
The first is that jobs of which basic wages are below the minimum must be eliminated, as this is unacceptable. The second is to increase the ratio between the minimum and maximum wages 1 to 7. Now the ratio between the minimum wage and the wage in the highest, 65th wage grade, is 1 to 4.7. Currently, the minimum salary is 1,203 euros gross per month, and the basic gross salary in the 65th salary class is 5,663 euros. Seven times the minimum wage is 8,421 euros gross. According to their proposal, there would be no minimum wage in the public sector at all, but it would amount to 60 percent of the average wage in the country. According to the latest data, this amounts to 2,244 euros gross or 1,480 euros net per month. 60 percent of that is 1,346 euros gross or about 900 euros net per month.
The Prime Minister went on to say that the best housing is built by the state or public funds, even though they only built 2,500 apartments in the last 30 years. It is not clear if the Prime Minister is joking, because if he is serious, all the red alarms should be ringing. As expected, the coalition also agrees that the bearer of the measures should be the republic’s housing fund, which should be strengthened with budget money. Budget money on the shoulders of taxpayers.
Fajon promises that they will finally start working
The president of SD Tanja Fajon did not give better explanations than the Prime Minister on this topic, but she promised that after seven months they will finally start working, “we committed ourselves to an ambitious schedule and hard work”, Fajon said, because after almost a year, it is not visible that anything would be done.
In his socialist manner, Luka Mesec added that the market is not working and from now on it will be regulated who will be able to build apartments in Slovenia. The coalition predicts the establishment of infrastructure for the construction of three thousand new apartments per year from 2026 onwards, which, according to their estimation, would require approximately one hundred million budgetary resources annually, this year alone an additional 25 million euros, for which they do not yet know where they will come from. For this reason, they also announce a rebalancing of the budget, for which we know that the Fiscal Council has decided every time to be “unrealistic”.
In short – the coalition promises a reform sometime in the future, and the public sector will take care of housing. The first serious explanations were promised within a week, the first serious starting points in April. They do not have a date by which they will carry out the reform.