Member states of the European Union have until the end of August to send to Brussels the names of their candidates for the positions of European Commissioners or members of the European Commission, which is a kind of European central government. This means that the new composition of the European Commission will not actually be known until early autumn.
As things stand, the outlook for the next five years is not good, as the President of the European Commission will remain the same, as will the composition of the coalition. In the last five years, the European Commission has often been the main instrument in the hands of the transition left, as it has succumbed to its propaganda: when a right-wing government has been in power, Slovenia has always been deemed “problematic” at the European level. When the left came back to power, suddenly everything was fine, even though the reality was much worse. All this regardless of the fact that the most powerful group in the European Parliament and also at the European Council level is the European People’s Party (EPP), to which the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, belongs. Clearly, however, the mainstream within the EPP group is bloodless pragmatism based on bad bargains. This is also the case in Slovenia’s recent history with the so-called noble right, tailored by Milan Kučan.
While Slovenia is governed by Golob, the European Commission praises it
In any case, it is clear that the quartet of Members of the European Parliament from the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) is powerless against the majority in the European People’s Party, as was already demonstrated before the elections, when the EPP made the incumbent President of the European Commission its candidate again and the SDS party did not support her. Well, the only one who supported her was the former Foreign Minister and now MP Anže Logar, who welcomed her re-election, but who has also had a number of “dissenting opinions” within the party recently. Similarly, Matej Tonin (New Slovenia party – NSi) also supports the old or new European Commission President, creating a situation of damned language, saying that “we support Ursula, but we do not support, for example, the green transition,” although it is clear that von der Leyen has made it very clear that she will insist on a ban on the sale of fossil-fuel vehicles within a few years. Well, she hid her position a little initially because, at first, it was not clear where she was looking for support to get elected in the first place. When it became clear that the Liberals, Socialists and the Greens were ready to support her, she immediately broke off talks with the right-wing groups in the European Parliament. Thus, with a delay of a few weeks, the European Commission’s report on the “rule of law” became public, hitting Hungary again, going after Italy as well (because of the government of Giorgia Meloni), and praising Poland, where the “centrist” Donald Tusk is now in power. As for Slovenia, the report was critical – apart from Slovenia’s too-slow path towards a “green transition” – only in the area of judges’ and prosecutors’ salaries and also of the funding of the national media outlet, Radio-Television Slovenia (RTVS), which should be more generously supported by the government. The European Commission report – presented to the public by the notorious Vice-President of the Commission for Values and Transparency, Věra Jourová, who will hold the vice-presidency until the new European Commission is appointed – praised the progress made in the area of media freedom in Slovenia.
Brussels loves the Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Slovenia?
From the context, it became clear that the left-wing non-governmental organisation the Peace Institute (Mirovni Inštitut) seems to have left its mark on the report of the European Commission. If we look at who the sources of information were for the preparation of the report on the situation in Slovenia in the past year, the picture is even clearer, so it is not surprising that the European Commission used such diagnostics to praise the new way of organising and managing RTV Slovenia. Let us remind you: with the new law on RTV Slovenia, the latter lost its Programme Council, where the appointment of members was quite open, as the National Assembly voted on proposals coming from civil society – instead, a closed delegate system was reintroduced, following the model of the Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Slovenia (SZDL), where only “the right” people are recruited by pre-selected organisations. Well, as is well known, the Constitutional Court first suspended this law, but after Jourová’s visit to the President of the Constitutional Court, Matej Accetto, the suspension was suddenly lifted, leading to the “depoliticisation” of RTV Slovenia and the domination of those who – in Marcel Štefančič‘s own words – “there is fucking more of.” It is tragicomic that the same Věra Jourová is now presenting a report in which she praises the organisation of RTV Slovenia and, at the same time, makes demands for more budget funding for the national media outlet, while she herself is unable to tell the truth about what she actually did on her visit to Slovenia, even though she has already been asked to do so repeatedly by Slovenian MEP Dr Milan Zver.
The Eurobureaucrats defend the Freedom Movement party
There is one more interesting thing from the report worth mentioning. Namely, Brussels recommended that Slovenia complete the amendment of the rules on parliamentary inquiries, which would supposedly ensure the independence of judges and state prosecutors. This means that the European Commission supports the bill on parliamentary inquiries, which was recently adopted by the National Assembly, while the members of the Council of State vetoed the said bill. The new law would greatly limit parliamentary inquiries, which is something that the Speaker of the National Assembly, Urška Klakočar Zupančič, seems to like a lot, and apparently, the European Commission shares that opinion. In other words, the government coalition has decided to limit the possibilities of parliamentary inquiries greatly, but only after the opposition finally managed to prevent the ruling Freedom Movement party (Gibanje Svoboda) from making a very obvious move. It took practically two years for the SDS party to establish a parliamentary commission of inquiry, as it was missing the necessary signatures from the other opposition party – New Slovenia, and in the end, it was the Council of State that voted for the commission to be established after many complications. And even after all of that, things got further complicated again, as Klakočar Zupančič wanted to block the establishment of the commission, stating that it would first have to be checked whether such an establishment is in accordance with the Constitution. The commission was still established, but the Freedom Movement party managed to get its own MP to lead it, probably trying to protect its own interest, until the SDS party proved that this would be against the law. After that, an odd and very obvious campaign followed by Klakočar to change the law on the parliamentary inquiries. And all of this was “blessed” by the European Commission, saying that this is about the protection of the judiciary and the prosecutors. Incredible.
Paper can withstand anything
Apparently, paper really can withstand anything, and until a few years ago, we in Slovenia cultivated the illusion that everything that we are not able to arrange ourselves, will be arranged by Brussels, thus bringing order to the rabid transitional predators. It turned out, however, that this is not true, and that the European Commission is, in fact, a great ally of the transitional left, which was quite obviously showing its power and destroying the rule of law, while the Brussels bureaucrats were patting it on the back in a friendly way. Even when Prime Minister Robert Golob openly spoke to the public media about how he would cleanse public institutions of “Janšaists” – supporters of Janez Janša. “The second time, we had really high qualitative expectations. However, we had a revolt of the entire judiciary regarding non-compliance with the decisions of the Constitutional Court. Political meddling in the police. Courthouses were bought illegally, and money was also distributed to the civil society. Conflicts of interest flourished. The depoliticised television was shown in all its glory. Media ownership remained even more non-transparent, and corruption and money laundering remained the same. There is too much to even mention everything,” said the lawyer and professor, otherwise known as a columnist for the newspaper Finance, Matej Avbelj, regarding the Golob government and its actions. And he also added: “Not only did the majority of the report come from the mouth of one single organisation – the Peace Institute, which is obviously – even though we have three law faculties in Slovenia – the only credible source for the rule of law for the Commission. The report also blindly trusts our dominant civil society, which, for the purposes of the current government’s political mandate, has been quite openly politically engaged. So, its credibility as a trusted source is zero.” As he further explained, the European Commission has been a political body since the period of J. C. Juncker‘s leadership, which issues political acts written by officials with a completely “clear value, definite strategy, but sometimes also a political tendency.”
What will follow in the fall?
As already mentioned, the EPP is of course heavily involved in this situation, because its majority opinion prevailed that it is better to adapt to the agenda of the left in exchange for the support of left-wing MEPs. After all, this was also shown in the exclusionary policy towards the parliamentary group of European patriots and the fact that there are only five right-wingers among the 14 vice-presidents of the European Parliament, despite the fact that the Parliament is (once again) led by Roberta Metsola from the EPP. It is therefore not unusual that disappointment with the EPP is growing not only among the SDS voters and sympathizers, but critical debates are also occurring in the circle close to the tops of the parties. However, mid-summer is not exactly the right time to make decisions with long-term consequences, and there will almost certainly be changes in the EPP in September, where there could be a split, but it could also be that a temporary status quo is established, similar to what happened in previous years, when Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party left the EPP after deliberation. Janez Janša’s speech in Bovec already left the door open for possible changes regarding the status of the SDS party in European politics, and Nejc Brence then wrote on the X network, among other things, about the contents of the European Commission report: “We voted against this in elections all over Europe, but we got the same left-wing European coalition that practically makes fun of people with such reports.”
Will Věra Jourová also be part of the new composition of the European Commission?
Given that the nomination of European commissioners is in the hands of individual EU Member States, and in the Czech Republic, the government changed after 2019, when commissioners were last nominated, it is unlikely that the notorious Věra Jourová will be included in the next Commission’s staff composition. But it’s not impossible. Jourová comes from the party of the former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, who was succeeded by Petr Fiala. However, as some countries consider the nomination of a candidate to be a matter of national consensus, it is not uncommon for governments to nominate existing commissioners once more. In July, Jourová was not mentioned among the possible candidates in the Czech media. However, it remains to be seen whether the European left will still want to reward her with some important positions.
MEP Grims: When it comes to RTV, the European Commission supports the rule of the unelected
At the end of July, Branko Grims, a newcomer to the European Parliament, commented on the events in Brussels and the European Commission report for Nova24TV. According to Grims, with the imposed game, where the Commission also has an effect on state affair, for example, when they confirmed the management of the public RTV Slovenia, which should be the television of all, not only the left-wing non-governmental organisations – that is, the pro-government organisations, Grims said that what happened is exactly what the legendary President of the German Constitutional Court, who later also became the President of Germany, Dr Roman Herzog predicted, when he said that he never imagined how deeply the claws of leftists penetrate public radio and television under the guise of the civil society, i.e. non-governmental organisations, and how biased such programs then become. “That is to say, this is nothing new – the rule of the unelected, which was already criticised by the German Constitutional Court Judge, is being implemented again today and is proving to be destructive for any pluralism and any democracy, so it must be completely rejected,” Grims emphasized. “Talking about the fact that the current way of managing Slovenian radio and television, which completely subordinated it to the left-wing ideological concept, contributed to its independence is, of course, an obvious mockery of Slovenia and its citizens. And not only of Slovenians, but of all citizens of the European Union, because this report is really intended for them,” MEP Grims also said, adding that such politics must be put to an end and that, as already mentioned, he would never support such politics.
Gašper Blažič
