Slowenien

The Slovene lands were part of the Holy Roman Empire and Austria until 1918, when they joined the Serbs and Croats in forming a new multinational state, renamed Yugoslavia in 1929.  Unlike most of the other former Yugoslav republics, Slovenia avoided ethnic bloodshed.  Disputes with neighbouring Italy and Croatia were settled during the late 1990s, and the country continues to grow economically.  Slovenia has granted political asylum to over 75,000 refugees, many of them Muslims, as a result of conflict in neighbouring Bosnia.  There are small Orthodox communities, and a few thousand Protestants (mostly Lutherans), who have been in Slovenia since the time of the reformation.  There are no WCC member churches based in the country.