Marta Kos, Slovenian candidate for the position of European Commissioner for Enlargement, concluded her hearing at the European Parliament on Thursday. During the hearing, she repeatedly evaded answers and was quite cunning, Slovenian Member of the European Parliament Milan Zver commented on her appearance. She tried to feign ignorance about her involvement with the former secret political police of Yugoslavia – the Directorate for State Security, also known as UDBA – and, as she was not convincing enough on the question of Ukraine, coming from a circle close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, she concluded the hearing in Ukrainian.
Marta Kos repeatedly denied that she was a collaborator of the secret political police of Yugoslavia, even saying that she did not know how her name had appeared on the list of domestic collaborators and that she believed it was disinformation. “Kos is on the list, which has even been confirmed by a higher court as authentic, so she was not convincing here,” MEP Milan Zver commented, adding that she was also quite cunning and repeatedly avoided answering, which was not fair to the audience.
“The 1987 list of collaborators of the State Security Service/UDBA secret political police was confirmed as “authentic” in court in 2011 by Dr Košir, the then-Director of the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia. A top expert on sensitive archival holdings. I believe him, not the unconvincing evasiveness of the Commissioner-designate,” noted historian Andreja Valič Zver.
Another Member of the European Parliament who was also critical of Kos and her feigned ignorance was Stephen Nikola Bartulica, who stressed that the fact remains that the newly-emerged elites in Slovenia and Croatia are deeply compromised by their communist past. “The new Enlargement Commissioner, Marta Kos, says that her name just happened to be on a list of UDBA collaborators! She claims not to know why she is on the list. According to her, it is disinformation. However, the list was already published in the 1990s, which raises the logical question of why someone would have wanted to mislead the public in such a way back then.”
Precisely because of the candidate’s communist past, MEP Zver said that they wanted to stress that there was a serious risk if she were to take over a portfolio such as the enlargement and reconstruction of Ukraine and that a more credible figure should be put in that position. This was also a criticism highlighted by MEP Herman Tertsch, who said that many people are upset that she is now in charge of enlargement, a process that is also taking place with regard to the countries in the Western Balkans, and that there are fears that she has information at her disposal regarding these candidates that could be used to blackmail them.
“She felt she was not convincing enough on Ukraine, so she decided on this gesture”
It is also a known fact that Marta Kos comes from the far-left political pole, the circle of Milan Kučan and Zoran Janković, both of whom are close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which could be an obstacle to her tasks and the implementation of the policies of the European Union, MEP Zver said. Nevertheless, she assured the hearing that support for Ukraine is an absolute priority for her and that Ukraine will be the first country she will visit if she is confirmed as European Commissioner for Enlargement. But MEP Zver noted that she apparently chose to conclude her hearing in Ukrainian because she felt that she was not convincing enough about Ukraine, which prompted her to decide on this gesture. “But she also tried very hard to portray herself as very pro-Ukrainian.”
MEP Zver added that he was not satisfied with Kos’s answer to his question, as she simply ignored the last part of the question when he asked whether she would advocate opening the Belgrade archives of the secret political police – UDBA, and the security and counterintelligence service of the Yugoslav People’s Army known as KOS.
Avoiding answers
She avoided answering several more questions, including her links to Kučan and Janković, by instead listing her achievements as an ambassador. She also avoided a question about possible cooperation with right-wing MPs. She did not answer the question directly, but repeatedly shifted the subject to the broader question of European values and the rule of law.
She wanted to portray herself as a politically independent person
MEP Zver noted that although she gave the answers he expected, “she wanted to portray herself as a completely independent person, which is hard to believe given her political positioning”.
It will soon be officially known whether Kos has passed the hearing, but unofficially, it has been reported that she has already been given the green light by MEPs.
A. G.
