Slovenia

In 2023, an amendment to Article 49 of Slovenia's Criminal Code came into force. Paragraph 3 of Article 49 now reads as follows:  […] "(3) If the inclination to commit a crime was the victim's nationality, race, religion or ethnicity, his gender, skin colour, origin, financial status, education, social position, political or other belief, disability, sexual orientation or any other personal circumstance, this is taken into account as an aggravating circumstance."
    
In April 2023, ODIHR and the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) delivered a workshop for representatives of all key hate crime data recording institutions. The workshop aimed to raise awareness and improve understanding of hate crimes and their impact on individuals, social groups, and society as a whole, and to improve the national approach to collecting and recording data on crimes committed with a bias motive. 
    
In 2023, the SSPO participated in a study visit to the Swedish Ministry of Justice and a joint meeting of the "Working group on hate crime reporting, recording and data collection" and "Working group on hate crime training" in Stockholm, organized by the European Commission in co-operation with FRA. In October 2023, the SSPO participated in the EJTN seminar on "Hate crime and hate speech”, which took place in Split, Croatia. 
    
The latest meeting of the Working Group on Hate Crimes took place in October 2023. Given that the Working Group was primarily established to deal with offences under Article 297 of the Criminal Code (Public Incitement to Hatred, Violence and Intolerance), some attention was also given to this topic. Recommendations of the newly established Strategic Council for the Prevention of Hate Speech were also presented at the meeting, as well as an analysis of the prosecutorial practice in prosecuting offenders under Article 297.

In December 2023, the Government of the Republic of Slovenia adopted a Strategy on Combating Antisemitism 2023. The Strategy aims to strengthen the competencies of public officials, the police, and the judiciary in dealing with cases involving anti-Semitism and establish an interdepartmental working group to monitor the implementation of the Strategy and address challenges in the fight against anti-Semitism.