The Court of Audit responded to the National Demographic Fund Act proposal and pointed out its inconsistencies. Additionally, the Court of Audit believes that the concerned Act cannot impose on the Court of Audit the obligation to implement mandatory annual audit of a new demographic fund, since this interferes with its independent and autonomous status the Court of Audit has as the national highest public finance supervisory body. However, the Court of Audit welcomes the intention of the Ministry of Finance to address this public finance issue and supports the idea that additional financial resources have to be provided for the pension insurance budget. Yet, the Act foresees several novelties which place a disproportionate burden on the Court of Audit, thereby interfering in its independence pertaining to making decisions which audits to commence. Furthermore, the proposed Act lacks safeguards against abuse of political power and intervention in transparent and autonomous management of state-owned investments, thus granting the Government and the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia considerable power. In the opinion of the Court of Audit, the proposed Act also lowers existing standards on state-owned capital investments management.
The Court of Audit thus proposed to the Ministry of Finance as the body responsible for the preparation of the draft Act to re-examine in further legislative procedure whether the proposed deviations are justified and to reconsider the possibility of maintaining the arrangements of the Slovenian Sovereign Holding Act (ZSDH-1) ensuring transparent, responsible and efficient management of companies and state-owned capital investments. At the same time, the Court of Audit believes that it is necessary to appropriately complement the draft Act’s provisions which, in practice to date, have proved inappropriate in terms of control, traceability of decisions and publicly transparent management of state-owned assets.
The response letter of the Court of Audit to the National Demographic Fund Act proposal is available in the Slovenian language.