A dedicated emergency law will provide EUR 13m in emergency funding, plus an additional EUR 2m for floods that followed the sleet in south-western Slovenia.

Planning requirements will be relaxed in a bid to speed up repairs of the power grid, as hundreds of towers collapsed under the weight of the ice.

More broadly, the law creates the legal basis for compensating companies and individuals affected by the ice storm and the attendant power outages with public funds.

For example the various network fees attached to monthly electricity bills will be waived for the duration of power outages.

Additionally, companies that had to employ generators to continue operating will be able to claim a 50% refund on petrol excise.

Meanwhile, amendments to the act on natural disaster relief will add sleet to natural disasters as a means to allow the government to allocate budget funds for relief expenditure.

The forest act will also be amended to speed up the cleanup of the estimated seven million cubic metres of wood downed by ice.

Recently introduced wood provenance certificates, originally intended to curb illegal logging, will thus be waived for private forest owners until April 2015.