The media report that the new government intends to launch talks with the European Union immediately after its formation in order to make some changes to the recovery and resilience plan, with which the money could be used specifically for financing the green transition and digitalisation. In other words – they will not build roads, schools, kindergartens, nursing homes, water distribution systems, playgrounds, or student dorms but will instead channel the money to non-governmental organisations.
With the coordinating of the coalition agreement of the future government of Robert Golob, the coalition parties’ priorities are coming to the fore, which, in addition to the complete subordination of the media and the removal of the fence at the border, also include making some changes to the plan for spending European funds. Namely, they want to allocate them to the green transition and digitalisation. This should cause all alarms to go off, both in Slovenia as well as in Brussels.
It should be noted that at the end of March, the government of Janez Janša presented a set of investments in different municipalities, which are already in progress or at least already have the money provided for them. The value of the project is almost eight billion euros, of which 1.5 billion euros were drawn from the European funds. This is the biggest investment drive so far, Janša pointed out. “This is the largest investment drive that Slovenia has ever been able to launch. In a few years, this will be the next step in Slovenia’s development; based on this, we will have higher wages and pensions, better jobs, more investments, a better business environment.”
The activists have started charging for their services
After the victory of the Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda), the Social Democrats (Socialni demokrati – SD) and the Left party (Levica), the priorities are about to change. From roads, schools, kindergartens, nursing homes, water distribution systems and student dorms, the money will now be transferred to non-governmental organisations which helped the transitional left win this election. This is also the reason why activists like Nika Kovač (director of the Institute of the 8th of March), Tea Jarc (head of the Youth Plus Trade Union), Jaša Jenull (organiser of the anti-government protests), and others were so brutally activated in the election campaign – because they wanted money, and now they have started charging for their past services. This is a story we have already seen in the past years of left-wing governments, when they spent enormous sums of money on studies, but did not build a single home for the elderly, despite living in an increasingly ageing society. Slovenian pensioners will thus once again be forgotten by the new government of the parallel mechanism.
Peter Truden
