At Tuesday’s press conference convened by the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS), President Janez Janša and Member of the European Parliament Milan Zver revealed key internal documents of the European Commission in connection with the visit of European Commission Vice-President Věra Jourová to Slovenia. They also discussed the consequences of the illegal visit, which subsequently affected the functioning of the Constitutional Court.
In his opening address, the SDS party President Janez Janša explained that the European Union is based on treaties, which set out what is permissible. One of the fundamental provisions of the treaty on which the EU is based states that the European institutions may only exercise the competencies laid down in the treaties. Anything else is the responsibility of the individual Member States.
Janša and Zver call on Commissioner Věra Juorová to resign
During the press conference, Janša and Zver called on the Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Values and Transparency to resign, as her actions have violated several legal acts and even the fundamental Lisbon Treaty.
“It took a year to get the material, but even today, the third point is blacked out. What are they hiding? They are probably counting on the mandate expiring soon, the documents getting lost somewhere, and Věra Jourová no longer being Commissioner,” said Janša, adding that the SDS party would also initiate other proceedings in various political forums of the European Union against the Commissioner. “What Vera Jourova has allowed herself to do is a fundamental abuse of office. There have been similar cases in the past, but this is the first case where the abuse can be proven and exposed with concrete documents,” concluded Janez Janša.
Janša: this kind of influencing would not happen in any other EU country
Janša also pointed out that the case actually reaches back to one year ago. At that time, the Constitutional Court was considering the constitutionality of the Radio-Television Slovenia Act and suspended its implementation. Shortly after this decision, the European Commissioner Věra Jourová came to visit the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia, which was followed by a reversal of the previous decision of the majority of the judges of the Constitutional Court. This happened in legally and formally quite unusual circumstances, and politically speaking, it was quite clear that this decision of the Constitutional Court was also based on the content of the conversation with the European Commissioner.
MEP Zver: the Ombudsman had to warn the European Commissioner for Transparency about the transparency of her work
MEP Milan Zver has spent more than one year trying to obtain official documents concerning the visit of Věra Jourová to Slovenia, which are public documents according to the treaties and rules within the EU.
It is clear from the information provided by Zver that there are grounds for suspecting that European Commissioner Vera Jourova has interfered in the internal and constitutional affairs of the Republic of Slovenia in contravention of the law.
The Commissioner has consistently denied this, and it was only after the intervention of the European Ombudsman that the documents relating to Jourová’s visit to Slovenia were partially disclosed. At first, it was not possible to read much from the documents because everything was blacked out, but after the latest decision of the European Commission, Milan Zver was given a hefty pile of documents.
MEP Zver also wrote on X: “I pointed out the lack of transparency of Commissioner Věra Jourová, who is also the Vice-President of the European Commission. We also wanted to highlight the extent to which she dared to interfere in the legislative process going on in Slovenia. This is unacceptable interference by a Commissioner. We also wanted to draw attention to the abuse of office, the dereliction of duty; and the biggest accusation that can be levelled at Commissioner Jourová is that she has attempted to politically influence the functioning of the Slovenian institutions, which is contrary to the Treaty of Lisbon and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. I therefore call on Commissioner Jourová to resign.”
“It is my duty to get to the bottom of this story. This is not a pre-election manoeuvre. I have been dealing with this issue for more than a year, and I did not come up with this incident on my own. What Věra Jourová did is a political fact,” Zver added, pointing out that Jourová’s remarks also show that during her visit to the Constitutional Court, they also discussed the political divide between the previous government of Janez Janša on one side, and the “positive” NGOs, the media and the current ruling politicians on the other.
Jourová branded Nova24TV and Demokracija as producers of fake news
The European Commissioner apparently even went so far as to mention the “right-wing media empire” in her reminders, highlighting Nova24TV and the magazine and web portal Demokracija. She even labelled the media as producers of “fake news”. MEP Zver pointed out that this clearly shows the extent to which the European Commission has gone in its politicisation.
Among other things, the reminders directly mention the word “depoliticisation”, with the removal of members of the Programme Council and the management of RTV Slovenia as a prerequisite. “And today, when the government gets to decide which representatives of NGOs will sit on the RTV Council, this is supposedly depoliticised,” MEP Zver added.
The Constitutional Court’s decision is “controversial,” according to Jourová
“They did not even shy away from various political assessments. They referred to the initial decision of the Constitutional Court as a “controversial decision”. Later on, they probably influenced the decision to be changed,” MEP Zver also revealed.
Janša appalled by Věra Juorová’s inadmissible influence on the Constitutional Court
Janša was surprised that the Slovenian authorities had allowed such a degree of influence to happen in our country. He pointed out that in no country in Europe would such influence on the supreme judiciary be permissible and that if the Commissioner had wanted to influence the German Constitutional Court, she would most likely have been arrested. “They came to tell the Constitutional Court in the ‘province’ of the Republic of Slovenia to change this decision. And the Constitutional Court did just that. We are at the fundamental question of the sovereignty of the state. Slovenia has not transferred this sovereignty to the European Union,” the Slovenian Democratic Party’s leader stresses.
Anuška Delić’s web portal “Oštro” cooperated with Věra Juorová
“The documents also reveal who the censor is in our country. It is the project called ‘razkrinkavanje’ – unmasking. An institution elected by nobody has been set up to check whether something is true or not. Tell me, is Anuška Delić Zavrl a politically neutral person or not?” Janez Janša wondered, adding that this is proof that the European Commission has been working with left-wing NGOs.
Janša also added that Anuška Delić’s posts on social networks prove that she is politically dependent on the left and more than obviously biased.
T. R.
