Slovenia. The Republic of Slovenia is a Central European country and since 2004 a member state of the European Union. It borders Italy to the west, the Adriatic Sea to the southwest, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast and Austria to the north. It has a population of 2,009,000 residents. About 400,000 Slovenians live outside the country, mainly in Italy, Austria and the United States. The current Slovenia was formed on June 25, 1991 when it became independent from Yugoslavia, after a relatively short armed conflict called the Ten Day War that pitted it against the army of the former Yugoslav federation led by Serbia. It was already at that time the most developed country of that federation. In 2004 it joined the European Union. [3] Slovenia in 2007 is part of the Eurozone, the Schengen area, the Council of Europe and since July 2010 it is part of the OECD. Ljubljana is the capital city of Slovenia according to itypejob.

Politics

Danilo Türk, is the current President of Slovenia, taking office since 2007. Slovenia is a parliamentary republic according to its Constitution. The president is the Head of State and is elected every five years by popular vote. The Head of Government is the Prime Minister, currently Borut Pahor. This position is elected by Parliament. The Parliament is bicameral, made up of the National Assembly and the National Council. Currently no one has a parliamentary majority. The main parties are the Slovenian Democratic Party and the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia.

Geography

Slovenia is a small Central European state of 20,273 km² that is located between Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia. It is a country with a very small coastline to the Adriatic Sea by the Gulf of Trieste, through the port of Koper, on the Istrian peninsula. It is an area populated in part by Slovenians who speak Italian. The Slovenian relief includes the mountains

Karavanke, the crystalline massif of Pohorje and the calcareous plateaus of Notranjsko and Dolenjsko. The Julian Alps, with the highest elevation in the country, Mount Triglav (2,864 m), retain traces of Quaternary glacial erosion, with lakes such as Bled. Karst formations, extending from Ljubljana to the coastline, are carved out by underground rivers and constitute huge cavities, such as the 19 km long Postojna Caves. Apart from the Drava and the Sava, it is worth mentioning the river Kolpa. The climate is basically alpine, except in the areas near the sea. The climate varies from the temperate coastline, to the most extreme of the eastern plateaus and the mountains, here with greater rains in summer. About half of the country (11,691 km²) is covered with forests, making Slovenia the third most forested country in Europe, after Finland and Sweden. Remains of the original forest remain, the largest in the Kočevje area. In turn, grazing areas occupy 5,593 km² and fields and gardens 2,471 km². There are 363 km² of orchards and 216 km² of vineyards. According to WWF, the territory of Slovenia can be divided into four ecoregions:

• Temperate hardwood forest or Pannonian mixed forest, in the east and southeast
• Mixed forest of the Dinaric Alps, in the central and southern mountains
• Temperate coniferous forest or Forest of the Alps, in the northern mountains
• Mediterranean Forest or Illyrian Deciduous Forest, in the southwest.

Economy

Slovenia is a developed country, with a GDP per capita of 23,335 dollars.16 Although in 2006 the relatively high inflation fell to 2.3% (before the adoption of the euro), in 2007 it presented a year-on-year variation of 5.1%.17 In In recent years the Slovenian economy has increased the rate of growth that it has maintained since its independence, registering 4.3% in 2004 and 2005, 5.9% in 2006 and 6.8% in 2007. [citation needed ] In the first three quarters of 2008, the economy expanded at an annual rate of 5%. Since January 1, 2007, Slovenia belongs to the euro zone, abandoning the tolar for the common currency of the European Union, the euro.

Demography

As of 2002, Slovenia has a population of 2,009,000 residents, although its population is slowly decreasing, almost in equilibrium, since in 2005 it was still 2,011,614 residents, 2000 more than today. Life expectancy is 76.5 years. 99.7% of the population is literate. The average number of children per woman is only 1.26, which is causing its population to decrease by 0.06% each year.

Novo Mesto, the largest population in the Jugovzhodna Slovenija region (southeastern Slovenia) With 95 inhab./km², Slovenia ranks last among European countries in population density (compare with 320 / km² for the Netherlands or 195 / km² for Italy). Approximately 50% of the total population lives in urban areas. The official language is Slovenian, which is a member of the South Slavic language group. Hungarian and Italian enjoy official language status in the nationally mixed regions along the Italian and Hungarian border. The religion that predominates in Slovenian territory is Roman Catholic, with 57.8% of the population claiming to profess this creed; the Muslim 2.4%; the Eastern Orthodox Church, with 2.3%; Protestants, 0.9%; others, 3.7%; agnostics and atheists 10.1% and did not declare 22.8%. 19 The ethnic composition is made up of: Slovenians, 87.8%; Serbs, 2.4%; Croatians, 2.8%; Bosnians, 1.4%. There are also Hungarian (0.4%), Italian (0.1%) and Gypsy minorities.

Ljubljana History

Around the year 2000 a. C., the marshes of Ljubljana were colonized by settlers who lived in wooden constructions on stilts. These peoples lived on hunting, fishing and primitive agriculture. To move through the marshes, they used boats made from tree trunks. The area continued to be a point of passage for numerous tribes and peoples, and thus, the territory was subsequently colonized by the Venetians, who were succeeded by the Illyrian tribe of the Yapodi and, already in the 3rd century BC. C., the Celtic tribe of the Taurisci.

In the middle of the 1st century BC. C., the Romans built in the place a military camp, occupied by the Legio XV Apollinaris and later the permanent settlement of Emona (Colonia Iulia Emona). It had walls and its population reached 5,000 or 6,000 people, many of them merchants, artisans and war veterans. Their houses were made of brick, and had a heating system and connection to the public sewer. The walls and floors of the same were decorated with paint and mosaics.

As it happened in the rest of the Empire, Emona was progressively declining, and thus the city was destroyed in 452 by the Huns, under the orders of Attila, and later by the Ostrogoths and the Lombards.

In the 6th century the ancestors of the Slovenians were installed, who, in the 11th century, fell under the rule of the Frankish people, at the same time that they suffered numerous Magyar assaults.

The name of the city, Luvigana, appears for the first time in a document from 1144. In the 13th century, the city was made up of three zones: the Stari trg (“old city”), the Mestni trg (“city square “) and the Novi trg (” new city “). In 1220, Ljubljana obtained city status, in addition to the right to mint its own currency.

In 1270, Otakar II of Bohemia conquered Carniola, including Ljubljana, but this passed into the hands of Rudolf I of Habsburg after his victory over Otakar in 1278. The city, renamed Laibach, belonged to the House of Habsburg until 1797. The diocese of the city was established in 1491 and the Church of San Nicolás became a cathedral.

In the 15th century, the city gained renown for its art. After the earthquake of 1511, it was rebuilt in the Renaissance style, being fortified with a new wall that surrounded the city. In the 16th century, its population amounted to 5,000 residents, of which 70% were Slovenian. In 1550, the first two books written in Slovenian were published in Ljubljana: a catechism and an alphabet, which were followed by a translation of the Bible. At the same time, the first secondary school, a library and a printing press are created. In 1597, the Jesuits settle in and build a new secondary school that would later become a faculty. In the seventeenth century, the city adapted its buildings to Baroque architecture as a result of the arrival of foreign architects and sculptors.

In the 19th century, the Napoleonic interval saw Ljubljana become, from 1809 to 1813, the capital of the Illyrian Provinces. In 1815, the city became Austrian again and, from 1816 to 1849, it was part of the Kingdom of Illyria. In 1821 it hosts the Congress of Laibach, which would set the European political borders for the following years. The first train, coming from Vienna, arrived in the city in 1849 and in 1857 the line was extended to Trieste. Electric street lighting was installed in 1898. In 1895, the city, which had 31,000 residents, is the victim of a major earthquake of magnitude 6.1 on the Richter scale, nearly 10% of its 1,400 buildings being destroyed, although the number of victims was low. During the subsequent reconstruction, several neighborhoods of the city were rebuilt following the Art Nouveau style.

In the 20th century, in 1918, after the end of the First World War and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the region was incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In 1929, it became the capital of the Yugoslav province of Banovina del Drava (Dravska banovina). During World War II, the city is occupied by Fascist Italy in 1941 and by Nazi Germany in 1943. The city was surrounded by more than 30 km of barbed wire, as the Slovenian collaborators (Slovensko Domobranstvo) faced the Yugoslav partisans (Partizani). Since 1985, a commemorative road surrounds the city where that fence was located.

After the Second World War, the city became the capital of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, forming part of the communist Yugoslavia, a status that it would maintain until the country’s independence. This took place in 1991 after a brief war, and since then the city has been the capital of Slovenia.

XXI century, since 2004, Ljubljana, like the rest of the country, is integrated into the European Union.