Prime Minister Janez Janša had an extraordinary session of the European Council in Brussels. In discussions, leaders focused on the current situation in coordinating the EU’s response to COVID-19 and on the renewal of the “Ready for 55” climate and energy package.
Arriving at today’s session, Prime Minister Janez Janša said in a statement for the media that yesterday’s debate on Belarus showed that the EU stands firmly behind its values. “The fact that we put human rights and political freedom of the individual, the human, at the forefront is the right answer to what has happened,” said Prime Minister Janez Janša, adding that Roman Protasevič’s personal freedom and human rights are concentrated throughout an effort to bring about change for the better in Belarus and “that similar terrorist acts or acts of state terrorism, such as the hijacking of a European aircraft over Belarusian airspace, will not take place in the future.”
“All our activities must be concentrated in the protection of human rights and political freedoms of the individual, because human rights and political freedoms are in the individual and his/her rights and not in the rights and freedoms of institutions,” he said.
Prime Minister Janez Janša also said that he was pleased that yesterday’s debate on EU-Russia relations was very open for the first time in many years. “There have also been differences, but in the search for a strategic response to these challenges, it has often been made very clear that the key strategic response to them is EU enlargement,” said the Prime Minister, adding that it was EU enlargement, enlargement of the common single market, the expansion of the space of high standards of protection of human rights and democracy. “For today, I expect that we will give additional impetus to the Commission and the institutions in overcoming the epidemic, in joint European efforts to keep recovery time as short and efficient as possible, without bureaucratic complications, and that national recovery programmes are approved by the Commission as soon as possible and resources for their implementation are also available as soon as possible,” the Prime Minister concluded.
Gov.si
