The Prime Minister proposed to the Parliamentary Summit to annul the consultative referendum on defence spending. The decision to annul was tabled by the Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda) parliamentary group.
The statement was confirmed by other representatives of the parties who attended the Parliamentary Summit.
Prime Minister Robert Golob thus concluded the series of meetings following Friday’s announcement that his group would also table an announcement that the Freedom Movement party would propose a referendum on Slovenia’s membership in NATO.
The Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) did not attend the parliamentary summit. However, the party’s president wrote on Friday on the social network X: “The governing coalition has more than 50 votes in the National Assembly. It can call referendums on its own. It can also cancel them. It itself proposed both of them. If the members of the coalition cannot come to an agreement, they should resign and stop causing damage.”
Vladna koalicija ima več kot 50 glasov.
Referendume lahko sama razpiše. Sama jih lahko tudi prekliče. Sama je oba tudi predlagala. Če se ne zmore dogovoriti, naj odstopi in neha delati škodo. pic.twitter.com/dYc4RxutMJ
— Janez Janša (@JJansaSDS) July 11, 2025
At the moment, it is not yet clear whether the Freedom Movement party even has the majority needed to pass such a decision. Even the Prime Minister does not know that yet. He said he “sensed” a considerable unwillingness to hold a referendum at all. When asked by the press whether he had the votes of the coalition to do so, he replied: “There will be enough time before the vote to ensure that there is a sufficient majority to overturn it.”
In particular, it is not yet clear how he envisages winning the votes of the Left party (Levica), whose political programme is built on opposition to defence spending and opposition to NATO, which wrote on the social network X: “At today’s meeting of the parliamentary parties, the Left party rejected calls to withdraw the referendum against the armaments issue.”
Last week, after a referendum on military spending was voted through in the National Assembly, the Prime Minister also announced a referendum on Slovenia’s membership in NATO, saying that, in his opinion, this is the most important issue. He has since become the subject of a series of severe criticisms from the public. And then on Friday, he said that if the National Assembly were to reverse the decision on the referendum on defence spending, the NATO referendum would probably not be necessary, according to the media outlet N1.
Ž. K.
