INTRODUCTION combat complex issues such as poverty and social exclusion are. The programme strategy implementation was thoroughly monitored and evaluated yearly by related statistical data analyses. Completing the harmonisation of the Slovenian legislation to the European Union, one forced the political authorities to build a specific set of social inclusion strate­gies in the year 2003, thus, accomplishing the process which had been put on the political agenda in the late nineties. Precise EU instructions for preparing the re­lated document, meaning Joint Inclusion Memoranda(JIM) forced the Government and its departments to consider new modes of social exclusion such as Internet ac­cess and gender related exclusions also in Slovenia’s setting. Following-up the JIM, in the year 2004, the Government have started the activities to prepare the related national action plan, thus, activating various experts, social partners and civil society. In regard to the preparation of up-dated political documents such as the National Poverty and Social Exclusion Combating Programme and Joint Inclusion Memo­randa, the Slovenian Government keeps showing the consistent and coherent po­litical interest in building strategies to combat poverty and social exclusion. Al­though the statistics show a slight decrease of poverty rate in the year 2000, it still is up to coming years to prove whether social inclusion strategy implementation is successful or not. Conversely, the statistics reveals the fact that Slovenia has launched the building of consistent and coherent poverty combating policy years before the adoption of international initiatives. Moreover, the fusion of exogenous social inclusion strategy initiatives and indigenous poverty combating policy as it melted in presented documents can be concluded as an efficient outcome of Slove­nia’s approaching the EU social standards. Poverty Research Tradition in Slovenia – From Academic Initiatives to Ad­ministrative Implementations Under socialism, the'Iron Curtain' was blamed for dividing Europe into the First and Second World. Both the similarities between Eastern Europe's social policy programmes and those in the West and assumptions about convergent development have shown this'ideological wall' to be porous. At the advent of the transition era, various initiatives indicated that poverty policy in Central-East European countries had to be renewed, and the experience of Western Europe might be seen as models. Any indiscriminate imitation, however, in terms of either poverty-alleviating pro­grammes or methods of adjustment to the poverty standard, would be undesirable. Western poverty approaches may or may not be relevant in Central-East European countries, but the choice of method is in itself a matter of judgement, and the dif­ferences must be regarded as an expression of the preferences in these countries (Novak 1996b). The late nineties brought on the political agenda of some CEE countries objectives of joining the European Community, thus, new social policy options were opened, too. Social exclusion aspect and social inclusion strategies pushed new perspec­161