The Constitutional Court of Slovenia has suspended part of a recently passed law mandating that state-owned banks release data on all bad loans on their books.
The court did not suspend a requirement that banks publish information about bad loans transferred to the so-called Bad Bank, the new public sector Bank Asset Management Company (BAMC) created to handle outstanding loans.
The original legislation mandated transparency only about loans that would not be paid back and thus were transferred to the BAMC.
During the lawmaking process, however, the disclosure mandate was extended to cover risky loans not transferred to the BAMC.
Suspension of these provisions doesn’t mean that the Constitutional court has already made a final decision, but rather that publication, mandated for Oct. 15, would have had an irreversible effect.
The bank loan disclosure provision was part of amendments made in March of 2014 to broaden the application of the Access to Public Information Act to cover private bodies performing public functions. (See previous FreedomInfo.org report.)
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