National Assembly (Slovenia)

National Assembly (Slovenia)

The National Assembly (Slovene: Državni zbor); acronym DZ), is the general representative body of Slovenia. According to the Constitution of Slovenia and the Constitutional Court of Slovenia, it is the major part of the distinctively incompletely bicameral Slovenian Parliament, the legislative branch of the Republic of Slovenia. It is unicameral. It has 90 members, elected for a four year term. 88 members elected by the party-list proportional representation system and 2 members elected by national minorities (Italians and Hungarians) using the Borda count, who have an absolute veto in matters concerning their ethnic groups.

On 21 December 2011, the deputies of the National Assembly elected Gregor Virant (Gregor Virant's Civic List, LGV) as the President of the National Assembly. He has succeeded Ljubo Germič (Liberal Democracy of Slovenia, LDS). His opponent in the election was Maša Kociper (Positive Slovenia, PS). On the same day, Ljudmila Novak (New Slovenia, NSi) and Jakob Presečnik (Slovenian People's Party, SLS) were elected by the National Assembly as vice-presidents.

According to the rules of procedure of the National Assembly, the largest opposition party is entitled to the office of the third vice-president. After the Slovenian Democratic Party led by Janez Janša formed a right-centre coalition with LGV, SLS, Democratic Party of Pensioners of Slovenia (DeSUS), and NSi in January 2012 following the 4 December 2011 parliamentary election, Renata Bruskole (PS) was elected. Besides PS, the Social Democrats party is in the opposition. The representatives of national communities, Roberto Battelli (Italian community) and Laszlo Göncz (Hungarian community), have signed an agreement about cooperation with the coalition, but are formally not part of it.