SWOT Report I - Central Europe

funding and EU programmes’ implementation, in this region particularly also for the
undefined ownership of former mine areas. Government has adopted Agricultural Land Act
which demands return of former mine land to the National Agricultural Land Fund instead of
to the municipality. Loss of land limits municipalities with already minor development areas in
resources and possibilities to reuse the land. Such ownership policy is also a result of lack of
national policy regarding degraded areas. There are neither funds nor programmes to carry
out the measures to rehabilitate degraded land. Even if the law on public-private partnership
exists it is not necessarily used. Due to ownership issues land rehabilitation is done only
partially, thus it is not attractive for new activities. In economic sense a lot of companies went
bankrupt or are now owned by owners who in terms of seeking short term profit could
financially exhaust them. Since there is not much interest into investments from outside of
the region and there is a smaller dynamic of new companies’ establishment, employment
may still cause problems in the future. Lack of investment interests come from poor image of
the region in Slovenia, and on international level also from the competitiveness with other
former mining regions which can offer larger areas. Due to slow economic development
further negative demographic trend can be expected such as aging, brain drain, emigration
of active population, and further increase in daily migration and increase of traffic density
between regional centres and larger employment centres outside of region. Regarding use of
renewable energy fuels, investments are moderate since energy distributors in municipalities
have long-term contracts for electricity or heat provision produced by the use of fossil fuels.
Energy policy also depends on oscillation in price of energy products which is under
influence of global energy market. Further decline of the region’s importance could happen in
the case of introduction of administrative regions which would probably lead into inclusion of
Zasavje region into larger administration authority of Ljubljana region.
SWOT Zasavje
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