“Slovenia continued to improve its absorption of the EU funds last year and was already four percentage points above the EU average,” Peter Žerjavič, the Delo newspaper’s correspondent from Brussels, recently reported. We were better than Austria, Germany and the Netherlands, commented former Prime Minister Janez Janša.
It is undeniable that the former government of Janez Janša was extremely effective in a number of areas, including reversing in just two years the disastrous absorption of the European Union funds, which had been ineffectively tackled by the former left-wing governments. The year 2020 was the first year in the 2014-2020 programming period when Slovenia managed to break into the EU-27 average and has been above average in the absorption of EU funds ever since.
Figures for 2021 show that the government managed to spend 71 percent of the funds available to our country, which puts us four percentage points above the European average (which is 67 percent) and ahead of countries such as Austria, Sweden, France, Germany… This leaves 29 percent of the funds, or just under 1.2 billion euros, unspent.
With the introduction of the Golob government, a decline followed But be warned, this year’s figures were published in August this year, and since April this year, when the elections to the National Assembly were held, and the coalition of the Freedom Movement party (Gibanje svoboda), the Social Democrats party (Socialni demokrati – SD) and the Left party (Levica) won, Slovenia has fallen from the 4th to the 11th place among all Member States of the European Union. We would expect the current government to pay as much attention to this area as possible, as many investments, development, and the standard of living of Slovenians depend on the funds received.
Gal Kovač
