The State of the World's Human Rights; Slovenia 2025

New legislation raised concerns over media censorship. The shortage of family doctors left around 140,000 people without access to primary healthcare. Roma faced systemic discrimination, particularly in housing and education. Gay couples, transgender people and single men were excluded from assisted reproductive technologies. Court backlogs delayed asylum claims. Fossil fuel subsidies continued.

Freedom of expression

The new Media Act, adopted in September, gave two government agencies the authority to determine whether media content could be interpreted as incitement to violence, “hate speech” or “terrorism”. There were concerns that such a review may not be impartial, leading to media censorship, and that the law’s proposed new mechanism for state-granted financial aid to the media could be subject to political bias.

Right to health

Around 140,000 people remained without a designated family doctor, including over 30,000 adults who continued to receive primary care in additional family medicine clinics set up to serve patients without an assigned personal doctor. Due to severe capacity shortages and other systemic issues at these clinics, they could not guarantee adequate primary care for everybody who needed it.

Discrimination

The “erased”

Over 25,000 citizens of former Yugoslavia remained excluded from the official registry of permanent residents after being unconstitutionally removed in 1992 following Slovenia’s independence.¹ There remained no pathway to permanent residency, resulting in ongoing violations of their right to nationality and the denial of access to political participation and essential services. Despite court rulings in favour of the “erased”, no effective remedies had been provided.

Roma

Roma continued to face systemic discrimination, particularly in housing and education. The Act on Urgent Measures to Ensure Public Security (“Šutar’s Act”) was adopted in November under an accelerated procedure, two weeks after a fatal incident in the city of Novo Mesto involving a member of the Roma community. The law expanded police and judicial powers, removed procedural safeguards, and linked social benefits to the payment of fines; measures likely to disproportionately affect Roma and deepen their social exclusion.

LGBTI people’s rights

Lesbian couples were officially granted access to assisted reproductive technologies in June, upholding the right of all women to non-discriminatory treatment. However, gay couples, transgender people and single men remained excluded. The Ministry of Health confirmed that medical treatment was not required for legal gender recognition and formally requested that the Ministry of Internal Affairs amend the Civil Registry Act to reflect this change.

Refugees’ and migrants’ rights

In April, the Aliens Act was amended to enable asylum seekers in formal employment or covered by social insurance for three of the previous four months to apply for a combined residency and work permit.

Due to court backlogs, applicants in the regular asylum procedure experienced prolonged waiting times for final decisions.

Despite reports of police violence and pushbacks against asylum seekers in Croatia, Slovenia continued transfers to the country under the EU’s Dublin regulation, raising concerns about the safety and legality of such returns.

Right to a healthy environment

Although the 2025 Climate Law legally bound Slovenia to reach climate neutrality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, emissions from the road transport sector increased and subsidies for fossil fuels remained in place, keeping CO₂ emissions cheap and making the transition to renewable energy less favourable. The slow pace of transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy across all industries further threatened air quality.

Irresponsible arms transfers

A shipment of military cargo was sent to Israel in August, just seven days after the government banned the import, export and transit of military equipment to Israel.² Representatives from the cargo company claimed that it was not aware of the new legislation, raising serious concerns about the company’s fulfilment of its human rights responsibilities and Slovenia’s enforcement of the law.

Right to truth, justice and reparation

The post of the human rights ombudsman remained vacant from February onwards, with the deputy ombudsman not authorized to perform the position’s full oversight duties.

1. “On the 33rd anniversary of the erasure: The wrongs of the erased remain uncorrected and threaten lives”, 26 February (Slovenian only) ↩︎
2. “Slovenia: Facilitating the transfer of arms to Israel ‘alarming’ and violates international law”, 22 August ↩︎