Slovenian employers employ many foreigners, especially in the construction sector. These workers are mainly from the former Yugoslavia, especially Bosnia and Serbia.
These groups of workers are covered by a bilateral agreement. They are first issued with a work permit valid for 3 years, followed by a single permit, which lasts for 1 year and has to be renewed.
The problem arises in the renewal of the single permit, as this can only be done in the UE where the employer is established or the worker has a temporary residence. In the case of construction workers who work in the field and move around the whole country, this limitation is disadvantageous and disrupts the work process. When a group of construction workers goes to the field, they usually leave the parent company around 6.00 - 7.00 a.m., returning around 5.00 p.m. If a worker has to extend ED, it means for him and for the employer that he will not be at work that day, because surely the whole team will not wait for 1 employee to go at 8.00 a.m. (or even later, because not everyone can get the first appointment) to the administrative unit, wait in line there, sort out the paperwork, give fingerprints, photos and so on, and only go to work at about 9.00 a.m. This is not acceptable in any business, much less construction. And if a company employs 10 or 15 foreigners, that means that not a month goes by without employees being absent for that reason.

We make the following proposals in relation to this problem:
1. the issue of single permits should be centrally organised so that it does not matter which UE the foreigner applies to for the extension of the ED. The matter should be dealt with in a similar way to the way businesses are dealt with now. It does not matter where I am based, I make registrations and amendments wherever I am most convenient. If the foreigner could apply at any UE, he would visit the UE where his workplace is during working hours, deal with the matter within an hour and return to work. This would also allow for a more even distribution of cases and a faster turnaround.
An even better solution would be to upgrade the SPOT portal with this option, where the employees themselves or their proxies could access the portal and the distribution of cases by administrative unit would be the fairest and the cases would be dealt with more quickly.
2. The proposal concerns the regulation of fingerprinting
UE employees are obliged to be fingerprinted again each time a request is submitted, as if the situation had changed from last year to this year. The requirement to take fingerprints each time requires coordination of appointments and therefore prolongs the procedures and requires a person to be present, which is an additional problem in times of epidemic. We foresee that a possible problem would be the storage of these prints, but today's technology knows sophisticated methods to protect such databases. Such databases are certainly already kept by the Police when dealing with criminals and they probably have a system in place to keep them secure. We suggest that the possibility be found of submitting fingerprints only once and then holding on to it.
The project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund, the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology and SPIRIT Slovenia, public agency.
At a time when we are all yearning for more digitisation, when the Government is announcing this as a national project, we could also take a step forward in this area. Such an option would reduce and speed up the work of employees in administrative units, while at the same time solving logistical problems and reducing the absence of employees in private companies to deal with administrative matters.