After the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) submitted a strong list of candidates for the upcoming elections to the European Parliament to the State Election Commission (DVK), they presented their manifesto with the key positions the party is advocating in this election campaign, which are grouped under the name “Prudently,” shortly before the start of the official election campaign.
Prudence is the word that has been most lacking in European Union policymaking over the last ten years, according to the SDS party’s President Janez Janša: “Prudence is the word around which the European Union was built. It was conceived as a space of peace and prosperity, with the aim that one day, the entire European continent would be united together in the European Union in a space that would protect both the Member States and the citizens of those Member States, that would protect the entire European continent; that it would be a project that would make the whole of Europe free and secure.”
We need to prudently rethink how to manage reforms
Janša believes that Europe needs to prudently rethink how to manage reforms and so-called transitions in the next five years – in the next composition of the European Parliament. “We need a prudent green transition policy, a prudent policy on the attitude towards migration, and in particular, prudence in the ability to distinguish between legal and illegal migration. We need prudence both in the formulation of comprehensive internal policies and in the European Union’s policy towards its neighbourhood and the outside world.” This prudence, he said, must be based on facts, on arguments, on scientific achievements, on all those things in which Europe has proved to be a place of excellence throughout history so far.
As Janša also said, the European Union does not represent the majority of the planet, neither in terms of population nor GDP, but it is the best, the most excellent in many areas. One of these areas is innovation, science, and this is what he believes can be the basis for a prudent, internal and development policy of the European Union in the future. The aim of the manifesto is that the SDS party should also do its utmost to contribute to the formulation of prudent European policies.
Pathways to realisation
MEP Romana Tomc, the leader of the SDS party’s list of candidates for the European elections, commented on the content of the manifesto, saying that it is not only the values and goals they pursue that can be found in it, but also the paths to achieving them. The latter, she said, is what many of their political competitors and fellow MEPs lack in shaping the European and domestic space. They have many ideas but no solutions or suggestions on how to make them happen. “Our party is the party of the people. We go out on the ground a lot, we are among them, we understand them, we listen to them,” she said, adding that for this reason, they have also written in this manifesto those things that people mention most often, that they are most concerned about, that they would like to see us find common solutions for in a common European space.
According to MEP Tomc, in the last mandate, a lot of solutions were adopted, some new things that made the European Union better, but at the same time some key mistakes were made. “Mainly because solutions and decisions were taken hastily, without in-depth analysis, and irrationally.” In the future, she believes it will be essential for politicians to act prudently and to keep the people’s concerns in their mind at all times.
Whoever comes to us must adapt to our way of life, not the other way around
As the MEP said, they will work prudently to protect the European way of life. “We are proud of our history, culture and achievements, and we will work to pass on the European way of life to our children. Europe is diverse, but we share a common Christian culture and heritage, a heritage of European civilisation expressed in our way of life,” she pointed out, adding that the European way of life is built on the foundations of peace, security, and solidarity. “Whoever comes to us must adapt to our way of life and not the other way around,” she made it clear
It is our right, she said, to decide who we will and will not accept. “We are working prudently for a safe Europe. We want to make Europe safe again because there is no freedom without security. We are working for a Europe where there will be no room for terrorism and no room for crime. This means securing our external borders against illegal migration. We are working for a Europe where we will also provide other types of security, energy and food security, and we will do everything we can to ensure that our families, our children’s families, and our grandchildren’s families are safe, both in Slovenia and elsewhere in Europe.”
Ensuring the safety and dignity of older people is of paramount importance
The safety and dignity of the elderly are also high on the agenda. “Our commitment to them is to take care of them, because we built our Europe together with them,” she explained. They are working prudently for a developed Slovenia in Europe. As she recalled, in the EU, we have created a single market, a common currency and an integrated economy. Slovenia, she said, benefits from development in different ways. “The high competitiveness of the European market requires constant adaptation and high investment in research, which we strongly encourage. At the same time, we are also protecting our environment and preserving it for all future generations through measures that are gradual, that are sensible, that strengthen our economy and not the other way around,” she pointed out, adding that there is also an awareness that without the farmer, there is no food and no life.
They will support families and foster the joy of new life
“We are working prudently for a Europe for all generations,” she said, pointing out that we are facing a major problem: there are too few young children. This is a strategic obstacle and a hindrance to the development of Europe and Slovenia in particular, she said. “That is why we will support families and promote gender equality,” she announced. The female and male sexes are equal, but they are different in their unmistakable natural roles (fatherhood and motherhood). “We will foster the joy of new life. This is the only lasting foundation for solidarity between generations and a guarantee of a secure old age,” she explained.
If the EU is not expanding, others are
“We are committed to and are working prudently for Slovenia in a democratic Europe. We are based on democracy; we will build a Europe in which national and European elections will be decided by democratically elected representatives of the people.” She announced that they would stand up to the rule of the unelected, both those in the Brussels bureaucracy and those in self-proclaimed non-governmental organisations or large media corporations. “We will demand the same rules for small and large EU Member States alike. The principle of unanimity should remain the way essential decisions are taken in the EU.” The EU will be preserved and strengthened if it sufficiently protects our way of life and respects the diversity of European peoples, while expanding to those European countries that are not yet in the EU. “The last ten years have taught us that if the EU does not expand, others do. And it is those who habitually threaten us who are expanding. That is why we will build Europe as our founding fathers dreamed of it, as a place of peace, prosperity, and security for all its sovereign peoples,” she concluded.
Janša also made it clear that they are counting on victory and as many mandates as possible and made the assessment that “the formation of lists on the left shows the weakness of the parties in the coalition”. “The balloon, which was inflated at the national elections for various reasons, simply burst after it was confronted with real problems, and now emergency solutions are being sought,” he said, according to the Slovenian Press Agency (STA), adding that the door for the SDS party to propose Slovenia’s next European Commissioner “is still open.”
Ž. N.
