Radiotelevizija Slovenija (RTVSLO)

Radiotelevizija Slovenija (RTV Slovenija, RTVSLO) is Slovenia’s national public-service broadcaster, a non-profit public institution headquartered in Ljubljana with regional centres in Koper and Maribor. It operates three national and two regional television channels, eight radio services and extensive digital news and on-demand platforms. Its public-service remit includes programming for the Italian and Hungarian national minorities, cultural and educational content, children’s services and music production. Natalija Gorščak has been President of its Management Board since September 2024.

Media assets

Television: TV Slovenija 1, TV Slovenija 2 and TV Slovenija 3 nationally; TV Koper-Capodistria and TV Maribor regionally.

Radio: Prvi, Val 202 and Ars nationally; Radio Koper, Radio Capodistria, Radio Maribor and Muravidéki Magyar Rádió (MMR) regionally; Radio Slovenia International (Radio Si).

Digital: rtvslo.si and RTV 365, offering news, live broadcasting, podcasts, programmes on demand and audiovisual archives.

Ownership and governance

RTV Slovenija is established under the Radiotelevizija Slovenija Act. Its governance was substantially restructured by amendments adopted in July 2022 and endorsed in a referendum that November.

The reform replaced the former 29-member Programming Council and 11-member Supervisory Board with a 17-member Council, comprising six employee representatives and 11 members appointed through independent, public and civil-society institutions. It also replaced the post of General Director with a four-member Management Board appointed by the Council. The new bodies were constituted during 2023, and the Council elected Natalija Gorščak President of the Management Board in September 2024 for a four-year term.

The Constitutional Court suspended parts of the amendment on 20 February 2023 and lifted the suspension on 26 May 2023. Its decision on the merits, on challenges brought by the former Programming Council president Peter Gregorčič and others on 28 December 2022 and by the State Council on 6 December 2023, was adopted by five votes to two and published with its reasoning on 24 July 2026. The Court upheld the new governance model, including the early termination by law of all governing, supervisory and management mandates, as a proportionate and necessary means of depoliticising the broadcaster consistent with the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression. It annulled the part of Article 18 that allowed the early dismissal of a Council member following a criminal complaint by the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption, holding that grounds for suspicion were too weak a safeguard and conflicted with the presumption of innocence. The ruling came almost four years after the first challenge was filed.

The institutional framework now faces another proposed restructuring. Following the parliamentary election of 22 March 2026, the National Assembly elected Janez Janša prime minister on 22 May and approved his government on 4 June by 49 votes to 30. The coalition comprises the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), the Democrats and the joint list of NSi, SLS and Fokus, with Resnica and the national-minority deputies supporting it from outside; Ignacija Fridl Jarc of SDS became Minister of Culture.

The Ministry of Culture published draft amendments on 26 August 2026. The proposal would replace the current Council with a 17-member Programme Council confined to programming and development, reducing employee representation from six to two and removing state bodies from the nomination process. It would abolish the four-member Management Board and restore a single Director-General, appointed by a newly constituted seven-member Supervisory Board with the prior consent of the Programme Council, and both bodies would have to agree to any appointment or dismissal. Six supervisory members would be appointed by the government on the proposal of ministries and professional organisations, and one by employees. The mandates of the existing Council, the Financial Committee and the Management Board would terminate when the law entered into force. The ministry presented the single-director model as ensuring clearer responsibility for the operation and development of the public institution; the draft was sent for inter-ministerial coordination and had not been adopted at this update.

Five organisations acting through the Media Freedom Rapid Response (the International Press Institute, the European Federation of Journalists, the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, Free Press Unlimited and Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa) warned on 9 October 2026 that concentrating supervisory appointments in the government would concentrate decisive appointment powers within the broadcaster’s supervisory structure, and that the automatic termination of serving mandates by legislation risks circumventing safeguards against politically motivated dismissal. They urged parliament to pause the reform and called on the European Commission to assess the draft’s compatibility with the European Media Freedom Act.

Source of funding and budget

RTV Slovenija is financed principally through a compulsory broadcasting contribution, supplemented by advertising, commercial revenue and state funding for designated public-service activities. Since January 2025 the monthly contribution has been EUR 14.02 for households with television and radio receivers and EUR 4.14 for radio-only households, with separate rates for businesses and accommodation providers.

RTV Slovenija’s 2025 annual report recorded total revenue of EUR 158.04 million, EUR 3.62 million above plan, and total expenditure of EUR 154.40 million, producing a surplus after tax of EUR 3.55 million. The report also gives operating revenue of EUR 152,138,127 and RTV contribution income of EUR 109,590,431, which supplied 69.3 per cent of total revenue; the surplus followed a loss of EUR 2.06 million in 2024.

The Council approved the 2026 programme and financial plan on 29 December 2025 by nine votes to three with two abstentions, with revenue and expenditure of approximately EUR 162.9 million and anticipated contribution income of EUR 109.2 million. The final plan projected 2,002 employees at the end of 2026, compared with 2,029 at the end of 2025; further reductions considered during planning were withdrawn because the broadcaster lacked the resources for severance payments.

Amendments adopted in December 2025 and effective from 13 January 2026 set statutory state co-financing under Article 30 of the Act equivalent to 10 per cent of the RTV contribution collected in the preceding year for national-minority programmes and 4 per cent for music production, subject to transitional arrangements for 2026. The August 2026 draft would retain state financing for those activities but remove the fixed percentage benchmarks, relating future allocations to actual needs and budget capacity.

The broadcaster faced liquidity pressure during 2026. On 12 August its management stated that the state had not even partly fulfilled its obligations under Article 30, and that the Treasury Directorate had, just before the planned drawdown, offered EUR 9.5 million instead of an agreed short-term loan of EUR 12 million, citing the forthcoming 2026 budget revision and uncertain repayment revenue. Gorščak said the EUR 2.5 million shortfall would push the broadcaster towards commercial banks at higher interest, and that it had always repaid its loans on time; salaries were paid in full on 14 August. On 15 August the Ministry of Finance stated that the broadcaster’s cash flows had deteriorated since the start of the year, that its short-term borrowing from the Treasury single account was limited to EUR 9.5 million and must be repaid by 31 December 2026, that no additional liquidity was available given its financial position, and that payment of part of the EUR 14.4 million provided for it in the 2026 budget had been postponed.

The financing system was also challenged directly. On 11 October 2026 an advisory referendum, proposed in July by the parliamentary groups of SDS, NSi, SLS, Fokus and the Democrats together with Resni.ca and approved by parliament in August, asked whether compulsory payment of the contribution for RTV Slovenija’s programmes should be abolished. The result remained unresolved by the time of writing. With 99.98 per cent of ballots counted, 461,765 voters (50.04 per cent) opposed abolition and 461,073 (49.96 per cent) supported it, a provisional margin of 692 votes. Domestic postal ballots had not all been counted, and votes from abroad were to be added on 19 October.

The referendum is consultative and does not itself change the law, so the contribution remains in force. A separate proposal submitted in November 2025 would replace the contribution with direct state-budget financing, but had not been adopted at this update.

Editorial independence

RTV Slovenija is subject to statutory obligations of impartiality, accuracy and pluralism, together with public-service requirements concerning political information, culture, education, children and national minorities.

Its professional standards and journalistic ethics rules, dated June 2000, address verification, impartiality, editorial independence, political balance, protection of sources, the separation of information and commentary, corrections, commercial influence and conflicts of interest. A Listener and Viewer Ombudsman, established in 2008, receives and examines audience complaints.

The governance arrangements introduced in 2022 dispersed appointment powers among employees and independent institutions, reducing the direct role of parliamentary majorities in selecting the broadcaster’s leadership, and the Constitutional Court’s July 2026 decision upheld the essential structure of that reform. The August 2026 draft would change the arrangement materially: a supervisory body six of whose seven members the government appoints would gain decisive influence over the appointment and dismissal of the broadcaster’s executive leadership. These concerns relate to the proposed framework, which had not become law at this update.

No independent systematic assessment establishing sustained government-directed editorial coverage at RTV Slovenija was located for this review.

AI and digital policy

RTV Slovenija has introduced artificial-intelligence tools into aspects of its digital editorial operations. Its 2025 annual report records 800 additional hours of subtitled television programming produced with a Slovene-language speech recogniser, as well as AI-generated summaries of reader comments and AI-assisted functions within the editorial management system, including the preparation of teletext summaries and keywords.

The 2026 programme plan proposes further applications, including adapting news for younger audiences, producing podcast summaries of daily news, translating material and automating traffic bulletins. The broadcaster also plans to develop an internal AI hub and to prepare guidelines and labelling practices for AI-assisted content.

These are reported activities and planned developments rather than a comprehensive published generative-AI editorial policy. No separately published newsroom rules specifying verification procedures, human oversight and disclosure requirements for the different categories of AI-assisted journalism were located at this update. The existing professional standards require creative uses of technology to be appropriately labelled and restrict virtual-reality techniques in factual reporting.

Classification rationale

RTV Slovenija is classified as Independent Public (IP) because its governing Council is selected primarily through employee, professional and civil-society mechanisms, limiting direct government influence over management appointments. Its principal funding source is a statutory broadcasting contribution rather than discretionary state-budget allocations, and legal safeguards protect editorial independence. Although the government proposed substantial changes to governance and financing in August 2026 that could undermine these safeguards, the reforms had not been enacted as of October 2026.

October 2026