Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, a rare EU ally of Hungary’s right to outlaw the promotion or portrayal of homosexuality to children, has claimed that imposing “imaginary European values” on central Europe could lead to the bloc’s collapse.
Jansa, who publicly backed former US president Donald Trump in his attempt to overthrow the result of the US presidential election last year, leads Slovenia as it takes the EU’s rolling presidency, steering the bloc’s agenda for the next six months. He is a deeply controversial figure, whose political career includes being jailed while battling for Slovenia’s independence from Yugoslavia and an overturned conviction for corruption.
The EU is facing daunting challenges as it seeks to rebuild out of a pandemic that badly damaged trust in its institutions, recalibrate its relationship with the US, prepare for the economic and political challenge posed by China, and accustom itself to a starkly different relationship with the UK, a former member state.
However, speaking to a group of reporters from European newspapers, including the Observer, as Slovenia took over chairing the EU Council by which member states help prioritize and form legislation, Jansa drew on his experience of the Yugoslav federation when asked about the greatest risk to the EU.
Two weaks earlier, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte led the charge against Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban over a bill that would ban gay people from being shown in educational materials, on prime-time TV or in films, and productions aimed at children. Rutte, who framed the clash as one of fundamental values, challenged Hungary’s leader to drop the law or take the country out of the EU.
However, Jansa said the imposition of an alien outlook by western member states was the “fastest road to collapse” of the bloc.
“There are differences that need to be taken into account and respected, and I think there’s a clear division between national and European competences,” he said. “You don’t judge a person based on imaginary European values, and dual standards are used, then I think this is the fastest road to collapse.”
“Up to 30 years ago, Slovenia lived in the former Yugoslavia and it was supposedly federal. There were five or six nations, three religions, six republics, two autonomous provinces and the country fell apart for different reasons, but the last nail in the coffin was when some people started using special criteria for themselves, applying double standards,” he said. “The EU without central Europe is not a European union — it will be just a shell and we should all be aware of it.”
DEMOCRACY AT HOME
There are growing concerns in Brussels about the undermining of democratic norms in Slovenia.
Jansa has been accused of creating a climate of fear for journalists in his country, in part through his personal attacks on individuals through Twitter, earning him the nickname “Marshall Tweeto,” in reference to the former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito.
The European Commission has also appealed to Jansa to stop withholding funds to the Slovenian Press Agency, a public service media outlet he has accused of “spreading lies.”
At the rocky launch of Slovenia’s EU presidency on Thursday last week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen invited Jansa to tell reporters gathered for a news conference when his government would appoint two officials to scrutinize the spending of billions of EU recovery funds.
Slovenia has failed to appoint prosecutors to the European public prosecutor’s office, which is tasked with challenging abuse of EU cash.
It was last week confirmed that Slovenia would receive 2.5 billion euros (US$3 billion) from an 800 billion euro recovery and resilience fund set up by the EU.
European Chief Prosecutor Laura Codruta Kovesi has described Slovenia as a “huge risk” as a result.
Further souring the mood of the day, European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans refused to join the traditional group photograph after Jansa brandished a photograph of two Slovenian judges pictured with left-of-center politicians to illustrate the alleged bias of the country’s judiciary at a meeting with the 27 EU commissioners.
Jansa brushed off the incident, saying: “It wasn’t us that started the conversation, and if you dislike the truth, it is your problem, it is not a problem with the truth.”
‘ROUGHLY TREATED’
The 62-year-old instead argued that the newest members of the EU — Slovenia joined in 2004 — were being roughly treated by the commission.
“We are not a colony — we are not second-class members of the EU,” he said. “We insist we need the same treatment. Yes, there are attempts that at least smaller countries in the EU are treated as second class. We exited the former country we were part of because we were treated as second class.”
While the Lisbon Treaty enshrines human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law as fundamental rights, Jansa said that critics of his policies, as well as the policies of Orban and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, were seeking to impose a particular interpretation.
About the debate two weeks earlier where Rutte made his comments, Jansa said: “There was no one opposing that all people are born equal, that we have equal rights, but there are certain distinctions when it comes to adoption of children, bringing up of children.”
In 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron urged Europeans to defend their values by rejecting “illiberal democracy,” a call that Jansa said failed to recognize the different stages of economic and political development within the bloc.
“The fundamental difference is not between liberal and illiberal democracy,” Jansa said. “The main difference is between democracy, and technocracy and bureaucracy. So I believe the term used, illiberal democracy, was not the right one.”
“Because this concerns a division that does not exist: All shades of democracy, if I fight for the affection of my voters, in a free world, everyone is equal,” he said.
During his two-hour briefing of reporters, Jansa reiterated that he was being madly maligned by “mainstream media.”
He noted that there were only few right-wing voices in the Slovenian media and showed a 10-minute video that he said illustrated that the country’s opposition parties are guilty of undermining the independence of the media.
“The fundamental charter of human rights also has the freedom of expression, and the freedom of the media is subordinate to that,” he said.
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