I would like to announce that after numerous administrative obstacles we have finally
succeeded to establish the Slovenian Curling Association. Many of you where wondering
what took us so long. I will mention only one, but the most challenging obstacle that
we came across: it was the name “curling” itself. According to the law about Slovenian
clubs and associations it is not possible to register the association or a club with the name
which includes a foreign word. The word “curling” wasn’t in the Slovenian dictionary,
and there was no substitute word either. However we have achieved a close cooperation
with the Slovenian institute for language, and the word “curling” will now be included
into the Slovenian dictionary with the whole explanation. This was the final official paper
that we needed to gain to register our association.

Please allow me to thank the Croatian Curling Association for their generous support
and also to the Serbian Curling Association that came to Slovenia and held a curling
presentation. The last but no the least of our thanks goes to the Secretary General Mr.
Mike Thompson for giving us the guidance to sort out our paperwork and to invite us into
this respective audience. We hope that the General Assembly will accept the Slovenian
Curling Association as a provisional member of the World Curling Federation. We are
aware that with the status of a provisional member we are just a half way to become a
full member. We will continue the work that we have started which is, that the curling
becomes popular and will be played also in Slovenia.