“This certainly indicates that Tanja Fajon participated in the preparation of the report of the European delegation. This is extremely unusual, reprehensible, and inadmissible,” said MEP Romana Tomc in her response to the latest affairs involving Tanja Fajon and her assistant Jure Tanko – namely, the document that was being prepared by the Democracy, Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights Monitoring Group, was apparently edited by Tanko. Ever since the beginning of this whole matter, we have constantly been pointing out that this story came from Slovenia, that it was exported to Brussels, and that it is now being imported back to Slovenia via Brussels, with the intention of influencing the internal political situation, Tomc added.
On Thursday, MEP Romana Tomc posted a picture on her Twitter profile, which proved that Jure Tanko, who is Tanja Fajon’s accredited assistant, had access to the report and that he also worked on it. “Whatever happened here, any interference by someone who was not part of this mission and does not know what actually went on is inadmissible,” Tomc believes.
It is also unusual that the Slovenian press Agency and the national media outlet RTV Slovenia also received the report even before Tomc did, despite the fact that she was actually part of the mission of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs to Slovenia, which happened in October, under the leadership of MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld. How could something like that even happen? “These things happen. The documents from individual committees from the working groups get leaked; however, these are documents that should have remained confidential,” said Tomc. It is a common practice for her colleagues on the left, in particular, to get the documents to the journalists sooner than to the other people who participated in the mission, she added. “This is another extremely unusual, unacceptable act.”
The content of the report expresses concern over the state of democracy in Slovenia, although it was said at a press conference in September that the institutions in Slovenia were functioning well. “The report was first drafted at the technical level, and in my opinion, it should have then been confirmed by all the MEPs who were members of the mission; however, this did not happen. We simply got the final version of the report sent to us. I strongly disagree with the way in which this report was created, as well as with its content, and I will communicate this to the secretariat and, of course, to the committee.”
Pressures will continue as long as the Constitutional Arch Coalition needs them to
MEP Romana Tomc also said that Brussels’ monitoring of Slovenia is expected to continue for as long as there is a need for it on the part of Slovenia’s internal political relations. “That is to say, as long as the members of the so-called Constitutional Arch Coalition – i.e. the left-wing part of the opposition – remains in the opposition, and this will likely be for a long time, these pressures from Brussels will continue to be exerted on the Slovenia government through Brussels.” She pointed out that she is heavily in favour of a serious and in-depth debate on Slovenia, the state of the rule of law, and the media space, not least in parliament. “We certainly have trouble with the rule of law and with an unbalanced media space, but these topics, which were the subject of the mission’s review this time, are not the ones that are important. We did not talk about the harassment of judges; we did not talk about the disintegrating state of the Slovenian judicial system; we did not talk about the concentrated ownership of the media, which is inadmissible. The fact that the media are in the hands of tycoons, or the fact that the ownership of the media is being hidden – we never talked about that. All of these are very important topics that need to be discussed,” she said, adding that she was saddened by the fact that despite Slovenia having such problems, the main question and topic that the members of the mission, who know very little about the situation here, focused on when coming to Slovenia, was the funding of the Slovenian Press Agency. “And, of course, we cannot call a report which considers these topics to be the most important a balanced, impartial, or good report,” the MEP also stated.
Anita Gužvič
