“When I came to the ministry, I immediately received a document that I was supposed to sign, which included certain decisions that, at least to me, did not seem to be in line with common sense. So I asked who made that decision and how can the proposed decision be on the table without being discussed by my office first. I was told this is how things are always done here. That the “experts” prepared a position, and the minister then defended it in various forums. We have turned these patterns in a direction that enables an effective, self-confident, and above all, a goal-oriented foreign policy,” Anže Logar, Ph.D., said in an interview with the media outlet Siol.
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Anže Logar, is one of the brightest points of the current government. After years of unclear visions in foreign policy, under the leadership of Karl Erjavec and Miro Cerar, Slovenia is now returning to both the European and the international map of the world. In the first year of his term, Minister of Foreign Affairs Anže Logar held 50 meetings in Slovenia or abroad, 39 video and audio conferences, and 20 official telephone conversations. Logar was the first Slovenian Foreign Minister after 2012 to visit Croatia and the first after 2007 to visit Italy, Siol writes.
The current Minister of Foreign Affairs even managed to arrange a visit from the U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, last year, and he himself also visited Pompeo in the United States. At the time, Logar already said that our country needs to strengthen its relations with the most powerful country in the world in the fields of information and communication technologies, digitalisation and artificial intelligence. He still finds this to be true and believes we must do everything in the power of our country to benefit from the potential of good interstate relations. By creating a strategic dialogue, Logar managed to establish a framework for further close cooperation between the two foreign ministries. “In recent days, the foreign ministry’s political director visited his counterpart in Washington.”
The media’s sullying of Slovenia’s reputation does not resonate abroad. Slovenian foreign policy has become effective and self-confident.
The key to success of foreign diplomacy under Logar is, above all, active diplomacy. He places great emphasis on meetings on a personal level. “Foreign ministers are the first and often the key conversation channels for exchanging views between countries, so it is worth investing in interpersonal relations,” Logar said.
In his early days at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was supposed to sign certain decisions that did not make sense to him. After a short research, he soon found out that in the past, the “experts” at the ministry were preparing decisions and the minister then had to defend them in various forums. “We have turned these patterns in a direction that enables an effective, self-confident, and above all, a goal-oriented foreign policy.”
In a few days, Slovenia will take over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The current government is constantly facing media attacks from abroad, as well as claims that it is trying to turn Slovenia into an authoritarian, dictatorial state. In his response to the media’s sullying of Slovenia’s reputation abroad, Logar pointed out that “this ruckus that certain people are causing with the help of the export-import articles in foreign media, does not resonate abroad.”
In the interview, Logar highlighted new paths in which he also wants Slovenia to play an active role. One of the priorities is also to join the informal group of the seven Mediterranean countries – MED7. He also helped Slovenia join the informal C5 group of the five Central European countries.
Regarding the non-paper affair, he said that this was just another one of the media spins with which they tried to weaken and destabilise the government. In the end, he also mentioned the “fighters for clean water,” who were nowhere to be found when the Ljubljana mayor was building the environmentally controversial C0 sewer.
Luka Perš
