Over 1,300 Civil Servants Preparing for EU Presidency
Slovenia is training over 1,300 civil servants for its spell as EU president in the first half of 2008, one of the biggest undertakings for the country since it became EU member in May 2004.
According to the latest report on the EU presidency preparations, adopted by the government in May, the presidency will be the task of a total of 1,344 civil servants, with 170 of them being posted in Brussels.
However, even that number will not suffice for the country to carry out all of the presidency's tasks, also because Slovenia lacks qualified personnel for certain fields.
This has resulted in Slovenia deciding to hand over the working group for products to France, while Portugal will be put in charge of desertification.
The cabinet moreover decided to hire experts from Slovenian faculties and institutes, as well as from abroad. The expected number is 45 from Slovenia and 25 from abroad, while the final number has not yet been determined.
The experts and other officials will also meet in the country during its spell between 1 January and 30 June 2008. The country expects to host ten informal ministerials and over 150 meetings on the sub-ministerial level.
Slovenia's stint is also to include a number of meetings between the EU and other countries, including an EU-US summit. The majority of meetings will be held at Brdo pri Kranju, near Ljubljana, where a new conference centre is under construction.
According to the report, the biggest challenge will be interpreting. Slovenia at the time has 140 potential interpretors, but is looking for additional ones, especially for interpreting from English to French and vice versa.
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