The week in review:

Parliament voted to decriminalize prostitution by adopting the amendments on 29 May. According to the amendments, prostitution is no longer a punishable violation, and prostitutes will be viewed as businesspeople. However, the amendments allow only for individuals to engage in prostitution who chose to do so. Forcing others into prostitution remains illegal, as does pimping.

According to STA, there are no official data on the number of prostitutes in the country. However, the police estimate that there are about 2000 females, while the number of males is impossible to determine.

After nearly a decade, parliament may be ready to debate a draft law on same-sex unions. Gay-rights organizations say that the draft has attracted the support of the LDS and ZLSD, two key parties in parliament and the government, as well as the SMS. The draft law, prepared by the Ministry of Labor, Family and Social Affairs, is expected to enter parliamentary procedure later this month.

If passed, the bill would not only allow same-sex unions to take place, but would also give them the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexual marriages. Individuals in same-sex unions, however, would still be unable to adopt children without additional legislation.

Same-sex unions are legally permitted in a number of countries, including all of the Scandinavian countries, Belgium, France, Germany and Portugal. Draft laws are currently being reviewed in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia.

The news follows Ljubljana’s third annual gay pride parade, held on 20 June. This year, more than 300 people turned out, hoping to draw attention to the community’s long-standing demand for legislation enabling same-sex partnerships in the country.

Politicians – but not journalists and media owners – are pleased that the country should soon have a Fund for the Pluralization of the Media with a budget of more than SIT 1 billion (USD 5 million). The move is part of proposed changes to the Law on Media, called for by the civil initiative "Something Must be Done," led by Barbara Brezigar. The basic purpose of the Media Fund would be the political pluralization of the Slovene media, a long-standing demand of conservatives.

The opposition SDS and NSi entered the draft amendments into parliamentary procedure this week. The Ministry of Culture is also preparing a version of its own, which should be submitted to parliament soon. According to Delo, both versions contain proposals to create a Fund for the Pluralization of the Media.

The SDS/NSi version of the draft amendments proposes that the Fund support both print and electronic media; the Ministry version proposes that the Fund only deal with print media.

Both versions agree that the Fund’s budget should be one billion tolars. The SDS/NSi version suggests the budget be provided by the national budget. However, the Ministry version foresees only about one quarter of the total budget coming from public sources. A 2 – 5% tax on advertising revenue taken in by existing print media outlets would be levied to make up the difference.

According to reactions published this week in Delo, media owners are not enthused about the plan, and particularly oppose the introduction of the advertising tax to pay for the Fund.

Head of the Delo corporation Jure Apih’s concerns were closer to his organization’s own purse strings: "It would be entirely unacceptable that pluralization be carried out by taking from the successful and giving to those who are not."

Branko Bergant, member of the administration of the firm which publishes the daily Dnevnik also opposed the advertising tax: "This is like demanding that Mercator donate five percent of its profits for the pluralization of stores."

Until now, station employees were working without salaries to keep the station going. The Slovene government was funding the stations’ other costs. According to various treaties to which Austria is a signatory, it is the responsibility of the Austrian government to provide its minorities with access to the media.

Since January, station officials and others have been fighting to survive. Countless talks with not only Austrian but also European officials have clearly gone no where. Radio Dva employees went on hunger strikes to draw attention to the station’s crisis, once in February and again in March when they were joined by local students. ORF had promised that it would create a new Slovene-language station back in March, but progress on that project has been slow. The latest version of the project sees a launch in January 2004, but the station would only provide eight hours of Slovene-language programming daily, according to Delo.

On 14 and 15 July, a conference called "Literary Creativity in the Prekmurja Dialect" will take place in Murska Sobota. The dialect of the Prekmurje region, along the border with Hungary, is among the most developed of the more than 20 dialects of Slovene, and has functioned for more than 100 years as a "mini" literary language, with its own separate lexicon and corpus of texts.

More than 30 papers will be presented, in three thematic groups: language, literature and national and social environment. Presenters will come from not only Slovenia, but also Austria, Croatia and Hungary. The collected papers are expected to be published by next May.

The organizers of the conference include the Dr. Šiftar Foundation, ZRC SAZU, Maribor University’s Pedagogical Faculty, the Regional Study Library of Murska Sobota, the Union of Slovenes of Hungary and the cultural society 7^th Article for Austrian Styria. Sponsors include the city of Murska Sobota and the Ministries of Culture and Education.

• From 9 to 14 July, Celje is playing host to an international graffiti workshop. Part of an international youth exchange program, "The Colors of Graffiti" is expected to draw young people from Bulgaria, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania and of course Slovenia. The event is organized by the Celje Youth Center.