Slovenia took charge of the world’s largest trading bloc this week, and immediately shone a harsh spotlight on one of the EU’s most vexing problems: How to accommodate increasingly vocal member countries with very different visions of Europe’s future.
Already, nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland are worrying their more politically mainstream partners in the 27-nation EU. Some fear that new legislation introduced by the two countries could undermine democratic standards and the independence of the judiciary.
On Thursday, Slovenia’s return to the European stage — it took over the EU’s rotating presidency for six months — was marked by concerns about the right-wing Slovenian government’s record on media freedoms and its failure to nominate legal experts to the fraud-busting European Public Prosecutor’s Office.
For Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa — who leads the Alpine nation of just 2 million people nestled between Austria, Croatia, Hungary and Italy — Slovenia is a misunderstood victim of “double standards,” sometimes at the hands of the EU’s increasingly powerful executive branch, the European Commission.
“We are not a colony. We are not a second-class member of the European Union,” Jansa told foreign reporters on Friday.
His remarks highlighted the growing tensions between newer EU members from central and eastern Europe and the founding states from the continent’s west.
“The EU brings together countries with different traditions, with different cultures. There are differences that need to be taken into account and respected,” he said, during an exchange that lasted well over an hour.
Pressure has mounted on Jansa’s government as it prepared for its EU presidency, which is largely about acting as an “honest broker” to find consensus among the 27 nations and ensure the smooth adoption of policies ranging from the environment to migration.
Protests in the capital, Ljubljana, have become routine. In late May, about 20,000 people gathered in a central square to demand that the government step down.
Jansa is accused of becoming increasingly authoritarian in ways similar to those of his ally, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Critics have said Jansa’s government has pressured Slovenian media, spurred hate speech and mismanaged the COVID-19 pandemic.
Asked about his attitude toward “illiberal democracies” like those in Hungary and Poland, the 62-year-old former journalist replied: “For me, all of these mainstream political orientations are equal, and equally legitimate.”
“I cannot agree to the division between liberal and illiberal democracy. Democracy is democracy,” Jansa said, before going on to give a favorable account of Orban and what he has done for Hungary.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils
RSS