Ljubljana - The government adopted an omnibus bill that would amend over a dozen laws and repeal dozens more in an effort to simplify bureaucratic procedures. The wide-ranging changes affect areas including official registries of laws and personal data, electronic serving of official documents and the powers of state secretaries.

A result of a year's work by the Strategic Council for Debureaucratisation, the legislation introduces a registry of the population, where citizens' name, family name, national identification number, home address, e-mail and mobile number would be kept.

The latter two would not be obligatory except when a person would leave their permanent residence address for more than two weeks. In that case, they would have to give their e-mail address to their administrative unit for any urgent administrative mail or authorise another person to receive any notifications.

Another proposed solution is an official registry of regulations that the government says would make legislation more transparent. The registry would include only state regulations, meaning laws and regulations passed by the National Assembly, government and ministries.

Dozens of laws and regulations that are no longer in use, including some dating from before Slovenia became independent, will be expunged from the official registries.

In line with the bill, payment with a pay card would no longer be considered a cash payment. The buyer would receive a receipt only at their demand and would no longer require to show it to inspectors.

A person paying for a product or service by cash would, however, still be obligated to take the receipt when leaving the business and show it to a tax or market inspector at request.

State secretaries would get more powers. They would issue decrees in administrative procedures, which has so far been in the domain of ministers.

One major change, which critics say has nothing to do with cutting red tape, is a cap on social security contributions at EUR 6,000 gross per month. According to business daily Finance, roughly one percent of employees has a gross monthly wage over EUR 6,000.

The bill has been criticised by trade unions, that claim the changes will reduce legal certainty and give great powers to state bodies.

The ZSSS trade union association also said that the cap on social security contributions would not lift any of the burden on development staff and would not have major positive effects on companies.

The Office of the Information Commissioner, meanwhile, has questioned the purpose of collecting e-mails, phone numbers and other personal data of citizens.