The five-strong selection commission, consisting of representatives of all three branches of power and of civil society, will meet on Thursday for its first session to appoint the chair, the office of President Borut Pahor, who will appoint the new team, said on Wednesday.

The commission will have 30 days to check which candidates are fit for the job and send a short-list to Pahor.

Pahor will then have another 30 days to pick the new team from this list, although he can issue a fresh call for applications if he is not comfortable with the candidates.

This could protract the appointment of the new leadership beyond 1 March, which was initially mentioned by the outgoing Corruption Prevention Commission leadership as the deadline for finding replacements.

President Pahor has indicated on several occasions that the outgoing leadership might have to stay in office a bit longer if he failed to appoint the new leadership by the agreed deadline.

The president of the Corruption Prevention Commission Goran Klemenčič and both his deputies, Rok Praprotnik and Liljana Selinšek, resigned in November in protest of the failure of politics to react to the commission's warnings to improve the legislative framework to prevent and fight corruption.