Through the proposed compromise amendment and appeal to the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia, VZMD has at least attempted to alleviate the catastrophic impact of the proposed amending act of the Book Entry Securities Act (ZNVP-1). VZMD's Expert Council - in light of the adversarial meeting of the Finance and Monetary Policy Council on Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - propose the following:

1. delay of the due date for abolishment of registry accounts until 2017 for natural persons (individual investors), with which their obligation to pay compensation for maintaining accounts would cease already for the entire 2016, although they would have open accounts for 3 months at most;

2. court fee suspension (which is, subject to paragraph 5 of the Article 10 of the Court Fee Act, a systemically relevant solution), whereby, in case of the lodgment of security deposits, also the probability of numerous individual disputes which may be raised by affected persons (particularly small shareholders) shall decrease in each individual procedure involving court deposits.

In this regard, VZMD has been appealing to the deputies of the National Assembly to make necessary efforts, in case registry account abolishment is inevitable, at least to alleviate detrimental consequences - both of social (higher costs, less transparency) and corporate nature (retreat of minority shareholders leading to ownership consolidation, poorer control).

The proposed amending act of ZNVP-1, which is about to be adopted in the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia, would have severe consequences for the capital market, particularly for over 260,000 Slovenian minority shareholders (individual investors), who might be the next year relentlessly deleted from the register of shareholders, that is, they might lose their shares in the face of abolishment of (their) registry accounts at the Central Securities Clearing Corporation (KDD), or »punished«with the court fees for the automatic court deposits of their shares. For this reason, VZMD has been persistent in objecting to this amending act of ZNVP-1, which was reiterated by the VZMD President, Mr. Kristjan Verbič, in the meeting of the Finance and Monetary Policy Council of the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia on Wednesday, September 2, 2015. (RECORDING of the meeting – VZMD caveats and proposals from 51:40 minute onwards)

Note that VZMD sent an urgency, to the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Slovenia in February, with which they reiterated that Ministry, among other things, was proposing termination of registry accounts at KDD, obscuring ownership structures, lowering the level of legal security, making it more difficult to attend meetings, additional financial and social burdens, explicitly reducing the number of minority shareholders (individual investors) and the proportion of local ownership in Slovenian companies etc. Even beforehand, VZMD had  frequently voiced against the proposed termination of the registry accounts (inter alia also using the remarks and proposals regarding the ZNVP on October 28, 2014, November 26, 2014 and February 5, 2015), in addition VZMD has since October 2014 been actively engaged in harmonizing the text of the Proposed directive of the European Parliament and Council of the EU regarding changes to the 2007/36/ES directive regarding encouraging the long-term shareholder engagement and the 2013/34/EU directive regarding specific elements of the declaration about corporate governance. Regarding the Proposed directive directly related to the Proposed amending act of ZNVP, VZMD sent its remarks and proposals as early as on October 2014 - in line with the Better Finance proposals (European Federation of Financial Services, where Mr. Verbič is a member of the  Executive Board) - also directly to the Ministry for Economic Development and Technology.