On May 1st, 2004 Slovenia was accepted as a member of the European Union (EU). Prior to the accession to the EU, Slovenia was required to complete the following steps as a prerequisite for entry into the EU: transpose into its national legislation the requirements of The Habitats Directive and The Birds Directive; establish The Natura 2000 network; include into Slovenian legislation the principles of The Water Framework Directive; and, implement the directives. The Ministry of the Republic of Slovenia for the Environment and Spatial Planning was responsible for the transposition of these three directives. In this thesis, the success of informing and involving the general public in achieving The Natura 2000 network objectives and in the implementation of The Water Framework Directive was analyzed. Additionally, the publicʼs attitude toward other environmental issues was investigated. The authors did find that the publicʼs understanding of The Water Directive is notas comprehensive as its awareness of The Natura 2000. Additionally in this investigation, a large gap was identified between a highly declarative environmental awareness on the one hand, and the publicʼs environmental behaviour on the other. It is our conclusion that disseminating a greater amount of educational information to the general public could successfully increase the publicʼs active participation in environmental issues. Despite the ratification of The Aarhus Convention, the authors note that the Slovene government has not yet recognized the advantages of public participation in decision-making, which can be one explanation for a lack of participatory democracy in the Slovene society.
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