Slovenia's Welfare Reform Bill Cuts Funding for Ljubljana's Home Care Services

A social services reform bill advancing through the Slovenian National Assembly this summer would restructure the funding formula for municipal welfare programmes, shifting a larger share of co-financing responsibility onto local governments, including the City of Ljubljana Municipality. The legislation, tabled before the assembly's Committee on Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Disability in late June 2026, covers home care for the elderly, subsidised counselling services, emergency shelters and family support centres. For Ljubljana, which administers the largest urban social services network in the country, the changes are expected to arrive at a moment when several of those services are already operating at or near capacity.

The timing matters for a specific reason. Ljubljana's Centre for Social Work, which coordinates frontline welfare delivery across the capital's twelve districts, reported handling more than 41,000 individual cases in 2025, a figure that local advocates say reflects rising demand driven by housing cost pressures and post-pandemic mental health strain. National policy had, until now, absorbed roughly 80 percent of core service costs through a centralised transfer system. The draft bill, if passed in its current form, would reduce that central contribution to 65 percent for municipalities classified as fiscally capable, a category Ljubljana falls into under the Finance Ministry's 2025 municipal capacity index.

What the Bill Would Change for Ljubljana Residents

The practical consequences would fall most directly on residents who access non-institutional care. The legislation proposes capping state reimbursement for home-care hours at 20 hours per week per recipient, down from the current administrative ceiling of 30 hours, with any additional hours to be funded by the municipality or charged to families on a sliding means-tested scale. For an older Ljubljana resident living alone in Šiška or Fužine who currently receives 25 to 30 weekly hours of assistance, that gap could translate into an out-of-pocket cost of between 80 and 140 euros per month, depending on income assessment, according to projections published by the Social Protection Institute of the Republic of Slovenia in its May 2026 fiscal impact analysis.

Crisis accommodation services face a parallel adjustment. The bill introduces a per-bed funding cap for emergency shelters, replacing the current per-diem reimbursement model. Ljubljana operates three municipal shelters plus contracts with three non-governmental providers, including the Kralji ulice network that serves people experiencing homelessness in the city centre. Under the new cap structure, the Slovene Philanthropy association, which co-manages one of those facilities on Metelkova Street, has indicated through a public consultation submission that its annual municipal contract shortfall could reach approximately 120,000 euros if the legislation passes without amendment.

Legislative Calendar and What Comes Next

The National Assembly's second reading is scheduled for mid-September 2026, giving the Ljubljana City Council's social affairs committee a narrow window to submit formal comments through the inter-municipal coordination mechanism established under the Local Government Act. Council officials are expected to table their position paper at the July 15 council session. The Ministry of Labour has signalled it is open to transitional provisions that would phase in the funding reduction over 24 months rather than applying it at the start of the 2027 budget year, though no formal amendment has been tabled as of publication.

Policy analysts following Slovenian social legislation note that the structural logic behind the bill, aligning local fiscal responsibility with local service planning, is consistent with reforms implemented in several other EU member states over the past decade. The question for Ljubljana is whether the city budget, which allocated 47.3 million euros to social and welfare programmes in 2026 according to the municipal budget adopted in December 2025, can absorb a mid-cycle increase in demand without cutting elsewhere. The city's finance directorate has not yet published a formal assessment of the bill's fiscal impact on the 2027 budget round, but that analysis is expected before the September assembly vote.

Residents with questions about individual eligibility or current service entitlements can contact the Ljubljana Centre for Social Work directly at its Zarnikova Street offices, or through the municipality's social affairs helpline, which operates weekdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.