Slovenia has the largest share of women graduates in sciences, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) among all EU member states, show figures released by European Commission earlier this week.

Parliament has endorsed amendments to national auditing legislation with which Slovenia introduces into its law the EU directive on statutory audits as the last EU member.

The deadline to fully phase out the Trbovlje-Hrastnik coal mine (RTH) has been extended yet again, this time from the end of 2018 until the end of 2020. Changes to the 2000 law on the RTH phase-out and restructuring of the Zasavje region, north-east, were passed on Friday in a 53:6 vote.

The National Assembly passed on Friday changes to the public sector pay act under which performance bonuses and promotions will be delayed from spring to the end of the year. Keeping the system introduced during the crisis is part of the public sector pay deal the government reached with trade unions last month.

The Culture Ministry has approved the planned merger of the newspaper publishers Dnevnik and Večer, with the last remaining step in the creation of the joint publisher DV Mediji now being the pending approval from the Competition Protection Agency.

The shareholders of the tourism holding company Sava endorsed at Friday's annual general meeting a EUR 2.69m capital injection as a counter-proposal from Slovenian Sovereign Holding (SSH) to the management board's proposal of up to EUR 5.05m.

The Russian-owned steel group SIJ has raised EUR 30m through an issue of commercial papers which is aimed at optimising financing costs and diversifying short-term sources of financing, SIJ said in a press release on Friday.