Prime Minister is known for his surprising statements. A few days ago, he criticised former President Kučan, who supported Martina Kos’s candidacy in the upcoming presidential elections. As if a single sentence from Golob could finally cause Kučan to retire. Similarly, upon taking office, he asserted that he would cut the influence of lobbyists. But after that, he immediately employed Melita Župevc, a typical lobbyist, the wife of Tone Rop. And we found an even clearer example of how Golob keeps saying one thing and then doing another…
On the web portal Erar, which provides insight to the general public into the operation of public institutions in Slovenia, we can see that on the 19th of May 2022, the representatives of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia were at the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning, lobbying for the Regulation on Packaging and Packaging Waste. Which is correct, and also effective, since it was clearly necessary to quickly inform the “obedient employees” of the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning about the positions and views they must have before the arrival of the new Minister, Uroš Brežan, who took office on the 2nd of June 2022.
The meeting in question would not necessarily be considered as unusual, if it weren’t for the fact that the same Ministry had sent a new draft of the Regulation on Packaging and Packaging Waste to many companies and then given them two workdays to comment on it. So, is it possible that the Ministry prepared a new regulation in just a few days? Was it written in the Ministry by the representatives of the section of garbage collectors in which the tycoon Martin Odlazek reigns? Officially, they presented themselves as the “Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia,” but in reality, they represented the narrow business interests of the main garbage companies.
The Ministry issued exactly the kind of regulation that suits the interests of tycoon Odlazek
According to our information, at the meeting at the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning, the “interests” of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia were represented by employees of individual garbage companies. What is even more unusual is that certain garbage collectors, who are also members of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, were neither informed about the meeting nor invited to it. For example, the packaging company Slopak, also a member of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, whose owners are large Slovenian companies, knew absolutely nothing about the meeting. Did the director of the Chamber of Commerce, Aleš Cantarutti, or anyone else from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry also not know anything about the meeting, despite the fact that the name of their organisation is clearly recorded in the Erar app as part of the meeting?
Is it possible that despite the constitutional suspension of the implementation of the Environmental Protection Act, which was announced on the portal on the 25th of May 2022 (the Constitutional Court decided that the act causes irreparable damage to the economy), the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning listened to all these garbage companies’ lobbyists? Even though, as the Prime Minister publicly stated, this very government must not fall under the influence of lobbyists? There was so much fuss about this, and in the end, we got a regulation written by the garbage companies. Is the garbage king, Odlazek, along with a few other garbage companies, really so powerful that he can dictate regulations to the Ministry? The game is definitely getting more and more interesting, and Golob’s government is actually interwoven with business interests. Martin Odlazek, however, once again succeeded in his big leap: the Ministry issued exactly the kind of regulation that suits the interests of the garbage collectors.
The Prime Minister can claim that he has given up lobbying. But the example described above clearly shows that his government is actually run by lobbies. And the garbage ones, at that.
Andrej Žitnik
