Slovenian News Agency (STA)

The Slovenian Press Agency (Slovenska tiskovna agencija, STA) is Slovenia’s national news agency, a limited liability company wholly owned by the state and based in Ljubljana. It was launched on 20 June 1991, days before Slovenia declared independence. It publishes about 400 news items a day in Slovene and English, together with photo, audio and video services, and has more than 80 journalists, photographers and other contributors. It performs a statutory public information service alongside market activities. Mojca Prelesnik has been Director since 18 July 2024, and Mihael Šuštaršič has been Editor-in-Chief since 7 December 2025.

Media asset

News services: Slovene and English news wires for media and other subscribers, with free news summaries on sta.si.

Photo, audio and video: a photo service, an audio service for radio and STAvideo, a subscription video service.

Online: The Slovenia Times, an English-language news portal; Ne/Ja, a fact-checking portal; and STAznanost, a science news portal.

Ownership and governance

The STA is a limited liability company with the Republic of Slovenia as its sole founder. From July 2011 it was governed by a dedicated Slovenian Press Agency Act, which was amended only once, by a supplement published in March 2021, before its repeal in 2026.

The National Assembly adopted a new Slovenian Press Agency Act on 3 February 2026 with 48 votes in favour. Published in the Official Gazette on 17 February, it took effect on 4 March 2026. The Act defines the agency’s public information service as covering its Slovene and English news services for media and other clients, news summaries published free of charge on its website, content for the national communities and Slovenes abroad, fact-checking and archiving. It provides for a five-member Supervisory Board: four members, a media expert, an economic and financial expert, a legal expert and an IT expert, are appointed by the National Assembly on the government’s proposal by a majority of all deputies, and one is elected by the workers’ council, for four-year terms renewable once. The Supervisory Board appoints the Director after a public tender for four years. The Director appoints and dismisses the Editor-in-Chief, also for four years, after obtaining the prior opinion of the editorial staff. The Act establishes professional eligibility requirements and excludes serving senior political officeholders and people who have held certain political-party positions within the preceding six months. The 2026 Act reduced the Director’s term from five to four years.

Under the transitional provisions, serving Supervisory Board members, the Director and the Editor-in-Chief remain in office until their terms expire, and the Supervisory Board was required to adopt a new founding act within six months. The Supervisory Board adopted that act on 15 June 2026, and it was published on 22 July 2026; the government exercises the founder’s rights, and the founder must ensure the agency’s editorial independence and adequate funding.

The current Supervisory Board members representing the founder, Jure Brankovič, Matevž Klobučar, Peter Ribarič and Mateja Fridl Stojanović, were appointed by the National Assembly on 19 December 2023 for four-year terms, each with 48 votes; Gregor Mlakar was re-elected by the workers’ council. Ribarič chairs the board.

The Supervisory Board appointed Prelesnik, previously Information Commissioner, unanimously on 11 April 2024 for a five-year term beginning on 18 July 2024. Although the 2026 Act reduced the Director’s term to four years, its transitional provisions preserve existing appointments until their scheduled expiry. Prelesnik succeeded Igor Kadunc, acting Director from 31 October 2021 and Director from 1 January 2022, who resigned in March 2024 for personal reasons; Barbara Štrukelj was acting Director in the interim. Prelesnik appointed Šuštaršič Editor-in-Chief in September 2025 with the support of 84.1 per cent of the editorial staff and contributors who voted; he took over on 7 December 2025 from Aljoša Rehar, who did not seek a further term.

Source of funding and budget

The STA is financed through state compensation for its public information service, paid under an annual contract, and through subscriptions and other commercial revenue. Under the 2026 Act, compensation is paid where subscription and tariff revenue does not cover the cost of the public service. It may not exceed the net financial effect, defined as eligible costs less that revenue plus a reasonable profit, and any overcompensation is returned to the state budget. The contract is concluded by the ministry responsible for media; for 2026 the Government Communication Office (Ukom) concluded it. The government justified the bill by citing a Court of Audit finding that the previous Act did not contain sufficiently specific provisions on the legal basis, funding and scope of the public service.

The contract was worth EUR 2,028,000 for 2021 and EUR 2,271,600 for 2023, EUR 243,600 more than in 2022, with 12 equal monthly payments no longer tied to the number of news items. It rose to EUR 2,397,000 for 2024, an increase of 5.5 per cent, to EUR 2,844,091 for 2025, EUR 447,091 or 18.6 per cent more than in 2024, and to EUR 3,403,379 for 2026, almost EUR 560,000 or 19.6 per cent more than in 2025, paid in twelve equal monthly instalments of EUR 283,614.91.

Ukom stated that the 2026 increase would fund the modernisation of equipment, computerisation and information security, and the alignment of salaries with the collective agreement for cultural activities.

State compensation accounted for about half of the agency’s annual revenue in 2021 and about half in 2023. According to the National Council committee that reviewed the 2023 annual report, market revenue supplied 53 per cent of the agency’s funds that year, and unfunded net costs fell to EUR 173,000 from EUR 370,000 in 2022.

Editorial independence

The 2026 Act requires the agency to operate on principles of journalistic and editorial independence, impartiality and professionalism, and provides that the founder and its bodies do not interfere in its editorial policy or editorial decisions. The Ministry of Culture described the Act as limiting the state to the founder’s powers and further protecting the agency’s autonomy from political pressure; the Slovenian Journalists’ Association said the opportunity to create a modern, sustainable and independent framework had not been fully used and called for multi-year rather than annual funding. The Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) opposed the bill, objecting to the urgent procedure, and New Slovenia (NSi) warned that giving the Ministry of Culture the funding contract risked further politicisation.

The agency came under financial and political pressure during Janez Janša’s third government, from 2020 to 2022. In July 2020 the Ministry of Culture published draft amendments under which the government, rather than the National Assembly, would have appointed the Supervisory Board members other than the employee representative, and the provision that the agency must not become dependent on any ideological, political or economic group would have been removed. A related draft would have financed the agency from 3 per cent of the RTV contribution. The STA Act amendments were not enacted, and the National Assembly continued to appoint the Supervisory Board.

In late 2020 Ukom requested business records, contracts, salary data and details of editorial choices, including the agency’s coverage of an interview with a rapper, and payments stopped; the agency said the demands exceeded what the law allowed. A provision of the seventh anti-coronavirus law required the state to fund the agency’s 2021 public service according to its business plan, regardless of whether a contract had been concluded. In March 2021 Janša asked Director Bojan Veselinovič to resign and the government asked the Supervisory Board to remove him. A government decree adopted on 10 June 2021 tied monthly payments to the public-service output reported for the previous month.

On 6 September 2021 the Supreme Court lifted an interim suspension of the decree, while finding that the state was obliged to fund the agency in 2021 in line with its business plan. A total of 19 press-freedom and journalists’ organisations, including the European Federation of Journalists, the International Press Institute, Reporters Without Borders and the European Alliance of News Agencies, warned that the agency had gone more than 250 days without state funding. Veselinovič resigned on 30 September 2021, stating that he would not accept the conditions attached to payment for the public service or take part in undermining journalistic autonomy. The 2021 contract was signed on 8 November 2021 by Igor Kadunc, then acting Director, after payments had been halted for 312 days. The following government repealed the decree on 22 December 2022; Culture Minister Asta Vrečko said the change restored the editorial autonomy of the agency’s journalists.

As of October 2026, no subsequent changes to the STA’s governance or funding arrangements under the government formed in June had been identified. No independently conducted systematic assessment establishing sustained government-directed editorial coverage at the STA was located for this review.

AI and digital policy

The agency uses automated speech transcription in its subscription video service, STAvideo, which transcribes speech in videos automatically in near real time.

No published policy governing the use of generative artificial intelligence in the STA newsroom was located at this update.

Classification rationale

STA is classified as Independent State Funded and State Managed (ISFM) because it is wholly owned by the state, which exercises substantial influence over its governance through the appointment of four of its five Supervisory Board members and finances its public-service activities through annual contracts. Although the agency has experienced serious political and financial interference, statutory protections safeguard editorial independence, and no sustained government direction of editorial coverage was established for this review.

October 2026