The change in the constitutional structure of the legislative referendum in 2013 affected legislative referendum in three ways – it reduced the number of proposers of the referendum, determined cases of inadmissibility of the call for a referendum, and prescribed the participation of a certain number of voters in a referendum as a condition for the adoption of a valid decision. The most important thing about the topic of this master's thesis is that with this change the National Assembly has received more power, since according to the new regulation it is a key body that, in accordance with the constitutional order, decides whether a legislative referendum on a particular law is to be permitted or not. Previously, this decision was in the hands of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia.
The constitutional amendment presents a substantive legal basis for the decision of the National Assembly. Therefore, at the beginning of the master's thesis, the regulation of the legislative referendum is briefly summarized, with a focus on the constitutional system.
In the following, the legislative referendum is discussed mainly from a procedural point of view, as the basic provisions of the referendum process are presented.
The main part of the master's thesis is dedicated to the events in the National Assembly. The time aspect of deciding on the admissibility of the call for a legislative referendum, the decision to reject the call for a legislative referendum, the judicial protection against the decision of the entities in the referendum procedure, and the competences of the National Assembly and the President of the National Assembly related to all that. The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia has already resolved many dilemmas after the constitutional amendment was introduced, which is why the decisions of the latter are presented in more detail.
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