During the term of the previous government of Janez Janša, the average outside observer could have concluded from the reactions of the European Commission, especially the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), and the European Commission’s infamous report on the rule of law, that Slovenia was sliding into a Russian-style autocracy. In Europe, Slovenian left-wing activists painted a picture of journalists not even daring to venture out of their flats, and the Eurocrats believed them. Two years later, the European Commission seems to be quite satisfied with Golob’s terror regime.
“This is really shameful, Sophie In ‘t Veld! The report on the rule of law and media freedom is a complete political pamphlet and a prime example of double standards. Slovenia is supposedly making progress in every respect under the new left-wing government. A positive example. The national media outlet Radio-Television Slovenia (RTV) is doing good, the rule of law is also doing good, it is just corruption that is the problem. That’s what the report says, anyway. No wonder then that people do not trust the European institutions. Shameful politicking from a person who proclaims herself a proud liberal. Left-wing progressives like Sophie are, for the time being, the majority in the European Parliament. That is why their attacks on right-wing governments are thriving, green ideology is spreading beyond all bounds of reason, the number of genders is increasing every year, and the European Union is becoming less secure and less competitive. However, things could be different. The condition for this is that the people make it clear in the upcoming EU elections that they have had enough of pests like Sophie!” Slovenian MEP Romana Tomc wrote on the social media X.
Under the previous government, fact-finding missions were sent to our country
During the term of the previous government, the European Parliament sent a “fact-finding mission” to Slovenia – a special commission to investigate the facts regarding alleged pressures on journalists and violations of the rule of law in the EU. Heavily influenced by Slovenian left-wing activists, they accused the then-Prime Minister Janez Janša of financially draining the Slovenian Press Agency (STA), harassing journalists (since any critical tweet was considered harassment), and staffing Radio-Television Slovenia with his own people (which never really happened, because at the time of the mission, RTV was firmly in the hands of the transitional left).
One MEP claimed that Janša “changed the Radio-Television Slovenia Act” (of course he didn’t), that “he does not want to transfer funds to RTV Slovenia” (she didn’t even know how the RTV contribution system works), while at the same time stating as a fact that the media outlet Nova24TV had received 120,000 euros from a media tender (which was, of course, again a pure lie). In the end, it turned out that our country was actually not moving towards authoritarianism, that MEPs had been deceived, and one of the mission’s representatives even made it very clear that Slovenia has a robust rule of law.
It was only Sophie In ‘t Veld, an activist left-wing MEP who apparently worked hand in hand with Slovenian left-wing politics and the street, who ended up writing a pamphlet relativising the findings they got from Slovenia from the few impartial experts they “interviewed” (besides the activists) – namely that the STA was not funded, however, she forgot to mention it was because the former director refused to produce the relevant documents that would have allowed the government to assess the agency’s costs, and the MEPs were very clear that the infamous “threats” made by the then-Prime Minister were nothing more than sarcastic comments on social networks criticising a lie that appeared in the media. Nevertheless, the final report read as if the rule of law in Slovenia was crumbling, and journalists were no longer completely free. Without, of course, any basis in empirical facts.
Golob’s government has subjugated the media, the European Commission notes “progress”
Let’s skip ahead two years. We are ruled in an increasingly chaotic and authoritarian manner by Robert Golob, with the help of the extremist Left party (Levica) and its older cousin, the Social Democrats (Socialni demokrati – SD). There are purges at RTV, people are being sent to wait for work, programmes are being cancelled, people are experiencing mobbing by the new management and by journalists loyal to the government. The Prime Minister brags to the RTV reporter during the programme about how “she knows” that their aim was to purge the Janšaists from both the police and RTV. This means that he publicly confirmed the accusations of his former Minister of the Interior and the Director-General of the Police, who accused him of pressuring the police, while hinting between the lines that the new RTV law, drafted by the leftist NGO the Legal Network, was also aimed at purging political opponents.
Is the European Commission worried? Will Sophie In ‘t Veld and Věra Jourová, two fighters for the Slovenian rule of law, start sending outraged letters to the government and sending delegations and observers to monitor an increasingly authoritarian government? Of course not! However, there is more! In her previous report on the rule of law, Jourová described the Radio-Television Slovenia Act, about which the Prime Minister publicly boasted that it would be used to ‘clean up the Janšaists’, as an advance for media freedom in Slovenia. Are European Commissioners and MEPs living on another planet? Or are they just very clever and corrupt politicians?
When the left comes to power, suddenly, there is “progress”
The European Commission’s blatant political bias underlines the crucial importance of the forthcoming European elections. With the European Commission we have now, in a decade’s time, we will see a whole bunch of left-wing autocracies where the European Commission will think that “they are showing good progress” as far as the rule of law is concerned. The fact that Brussels-style governments can afford anything is not only what we have seen in Slovenia so far, but also in Spain, where the socialist Sanchez is rapidly building the foundations of a new authoritarian socialist state; in Slovakia, where the “Social Democrat” Fico is cosying up to Putin; and in Poland, where the Tusk government, which is full of far-left elements rules (the Minister for Culture is from the ‘Lewica’ (the Left) party, an ideological cousin of our Left party), the EU funds have just recently been unblocked for its progress in respecting the rule of law.
The importance of the elections
The duplicity of European politics is more than evident, and the European Commission (which has been completely occupied by the left, despite the European People’s Party President of the European Commission) is being assisted by a completely left-leaning European Parliament. The European elections are therefore crucial and existentially important. If we do not elect a right-wing parliament this time, half of the European Union will be deep on the brink of authoritarian socialism by the end of the next mandate.
Mitja Iršič
