The new National Council, the upper chamber of Slovenia's parliament, met for an inaugural session on 12 December, but failed to muster an outright majority to elect a president. A new secret ballot will be held in a week.

The 40-strong chamber is made up of 22 representatives of local communities and 18 representatives of various interest groups such as employers, trade unions, farmers, education, healthcare, research, trades, culture and sports. They are elected indirectly by electors of those groups and serve five-year terms.

To get elected the chamber's president, the candidate needs to win an outright majority of 21 votes.

Entrepreneur Marko Lotrič, the CEO of Lotrič Meroslovje, a metrology testing and certification company that employs more than 180 experts in seven countries, won the most votes among three candidates in the first round, 15.

However, Jožef Školč, who served as an MP, speaker of the lower chamber and culture minister in the 1990s, won 15 votes in the second round, against 12 for Lotrič. Twelve votes were invalid.

Another candidate, Bojan Kekec, who serves his fourth term as a councillor for local communities, was eliminated after winning only ten votes in the first round. Školč, who represents education, won 13 votes in the first ballot.

The councillors will make a new attempt to elect their president and vice-president on 19 December. Until they do, the oldest among them, Stanislav Pejovnik, the former rector of the University of Ljubljana, will chair their sessions.

Unlike the National Assembly, the National Council is largely a consultative body. It can veto bills passed by the lower chamber and put forward its own bills.

The vetoed bill must be put to the vote again in the lower chamber but the bar for its passage is raised from simple to absolute majority.

The last such veto was imposed on the government-sponsored amendments to the income tax act that reverses tax reliefs introduced under the previous government. The veto was overridden on 9 December.

The power of veto was imposed 22 times in the past five years, ten of those times successfully.

During the last term, the National Council proposed 40 bills, which compares to 49 bills in all the previous terms put together.

One of its proposals was to reverse legal provisions banning mayors from serving as MPs, which were instituted over a decade ago. However, the proposal was voted unfit for further reading in the lower chamber in September.

Due to its limited powers, there have been suggestions that the National Council should be either be scrapped or its powers extended.

Urška Klakočar Zupančič, the speaker of the upper chamber of parliament, touched on the issue in her address to the inaugural session.

The council may indeed be one of the weaker upper chambers in Europe because it does not have the power to legislate, she said. However, it exerts influence through its opinions, proposals and initiatives, she added.

She suggested a rethink on a further development of Slovenian parliamentarism by potentially strengthening the upper chamber's role in correcting the lower chamber's decisions, or by increasing its powers in local and regional government.

Alojz Kovšca, who served as the president of the National Council so far but failed to get re-elected councillor, told the STA in a recent interview that the upper chamber was created as a safeguard.

The National Council has "the role of an emergency brake, of sober consideration unaffected by ideology and party loyalties," he said.

In his address to the new council, Kovšca looked back at what he said had been "a turbulent five-year term" that saw new challenges, such as the Covid crisis, and several governments coming and going.

The 7th National Council to date was elected on 23 and 24 November. Only 17 of the 40 new councillors were re-elected. The largest number, 22, are elected by electors of local communities.

Employers and employees have four councillors each, as do farmers, small businesses and independent professions combined with the remaining six representing non-economic activities.