Not only the government of Robert Golob, but also its close ally, the Mayor of Ljubljana, Zoran Janković, is prone to spending taxpayers’ money excessively on so-called “representative expenses” or food and drinks. In the last five years, the Ljubljana municipality has spent one and a half times as much on this as all other Slovenian municipalities combined. The Mayor of Ljubljana is often portrayed as a kind of ally of the everyday workers, but he and his allies are clearly living a life worthy of a nobleman.
How much does the Ljubljana city hall spend? In the last five years, they have spent a staggering 2.6 million euros on food and drinks. This is an incredible amount of spending, surpassing even the National Assembly, which spent eight times less than the municipality under Janković’s leadership, reports the web portal MMC.
The national media outlet, Radio-Television Slovenia, has reported on some “interesting” bills from well-known Ljubljana restaurants, such as Kovač, AS, Taverna Tatjana, Julija and the CUBO restaurant. In the latter alone, the Ljubljana municipality spent a little less than (an incredible) 115 thousand euros last year. And there’s plenty of alcohol to go around, too, for the municipality’s bigwigs and their guests. According to an invoice from the Kovač restaurant, six glasses of rum, two glasses of Poire Williams, and three quarters of a litre of wine were drunk during one meal. The municipality does not know who was dining – and drinking – on that occasion. However, as former Minister of the Interior, Aleš Hojs, pointed out on X, this is probably “bullshit”. “According to the law and the Financial Administration of the Republic of Slovenia, every participant in a meal needs to be recorded on every invoice for food and drinks spent as representative expenses.”
Consumption exceeds all other budget spenders
The Municipality of Ljubljana, together with the institutions and companies it controls, spends more on food than all other budget spenders combined. Take the case of the Ljubljana Festival: the festival’s director, Darko Brlek, and the director of Telemach, Tomislav Čizmić, spent 225.9 euros of taxpayers’ money on just one meal at the “Pri Žabarju” restaurant in April. They ate two veal steaks, veal shank, a custom menu, asparagus and salad, and drank four glasses of Poise Williams, a glass of sparkling wine and three bottles of wine, reports MMC.
Brlek, the director of the Ljubljana Festival, does not act contrite: “Look, some people drink one decilitre and have a problem, but some people can drink even more. But I don’t think it matters. What is important is the business results, and what is important is the artistic impression and, of course, the rating that the company or the Ljubljana Festival, which I run, has.”
He added that he often doesn’t feel like eating anymore because of the great feasts. “You can say it is a lot, or not. I don’t know, I usually don’t even feel like eating anymore at the end of the festival. And of course, you order the whole portion, whatever you want. It would not look right if you were just sitting there with an empty plate.”
The municipality spent 2.6 million euros on such expenses last year and 700,000 euros the year before. Ljubljana’s own institutions and companies spent an additional 240 thousand euros on hospitality last year, totalling almost 1 million euros. In contrast, the National Assembly, the nation’s highest representative body, spent twenty times less last year, just 55 thousand euros.
Most of the spending is on entertaining large groups of people. All other municipalities spent only 450,000 euros in the same period. Janković commented on this unapologetically: “The receipts are audited, we have enough control, so what the others have is really of no interest to me.”
The Golob coalition is also eating and drinking a lot
It should be noted that the table is also richly set at the government level. For example, in May, we reported on the culinary bacchanalia of the Ministry of Solidarity-Based Future, which spent nine thousand euros in just one sitting at the Fink restaurant. The exorbitantly expensive meal is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg. The data obtained show that the entertainment costs of the whole government far exceeded those of the previous government, and the Ministry of Defence was the most wasteful.
Ž. K.
