In 1970, the Executive Council of the Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia endorsed the principles of long-term, planned economic aid for less developed areas, which remained in force for the subsequent twenty years. These principles did not follow the Yugoslav model of aid for undeveloped republics, since they were based on the supposition that the carrier of economic advance was not a republic but local communities in the less developed areas. The republic was only supposed to create conditions for coordinated regional development. A system thus conceived, which gave precedence to the economic criteria over the social, made it possible in the 1970s for the economic growth and the rate of employment in the less developed areas to increase faster than the republic average. The positive economic trends (movements) slowed down the emigration of the population. The deepening economic crisis in the 1980s, however, put a stop to a promising start in solving the problem of less developed areas in Slovenia.