Before the European Elections

On May 4, 2004, just a few days after Slovenia officially joined the European Union, a historic event we Slovenians had longed for for so long, the Slovenian flag was raised in front of the European Parliament building in Strasbourg. It was escorted to the flagpole by the then Speaker of the Slovenian Parliament, Borut Pahor, and carried by my eight-year-old daughter. She earned this honor by being, at the time, the only available child of Slovenian roots in the vicinity. The event stayed in her memory, not least because of the kindness of the gentleman who held her hand during the ceremony, his face lit up not by the state-building, statesmanlike frown he brought to maxillofacial perfection in later stages of his political career, but by a friendly smile.

Two decades have passed since then, and in just over two months we Slovenian citizens will once again, for the fifth time, go to the polls to elect our representatives to the European Parliament. Again this time no records are expected for turnout, which from the very beginning has not exceeded one third of all eligible voters. It is true, though, that at the beginning we were, at least on the surface, much more enthusiastic about having finally become part of the European family and having fulfilled the so often repeated slogan Europe Now.

Twenty years after joining, it seems that in Slovenia our attitude toward EU membership has gone from enthusiasm, through despondency, to increasingly widespread Euroscepticism. From Europe Now to Europe Yuck. To tell the truth, this is a trend not unique to Slovenia. It is also true that the European Union, its institutions, actions, decisions and non-decisions, can be reproached for many things. The problem is that most of those who point to mistakes and shortcomings, as a rule, have no ideas for how to fix them, or else offer the dismantling of European integration, a return to the “golden” age of nation-states, in which everyone was master of their own house and we didn’t have to bow to unelected bureaucratic bailiffs from Brussels. The fact that this golden age never existed doesn’t bother the sellers of sovereigntist fairy tales in the least. Nor do they care that European integration is in essence a peace process and an answer to centuries of nationalism and conflict between European nations, which culminated in a devastating world war. Advocates of the de-Europeanization of Europe, without alternative solutions, should realize that this is a path that leads Europeans back to where we have already been, to times when we settled our mutual relations mainly by killing each other.

It seems that twenty years after our historic accession to the EU, we Slovenians are fed up with Europe. This is one of the rare points on which there is very broad consensus, both in public opinion and in politics. On the right, people complain not only about Europe but also about their existing political allies in it. At the recent EPP congress, which crowned the incumbent Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as its Spitzenkandidatin, among the few who voted against her were the entire delegation of the Slovenian SDS, as well as the SLS. More attentive observers of our recent history will certainly have been reminded, by MEP Romana Tomc’s recent statement that von der Leyen is not her president, of the wistful determination of Sonja Lokar as the Slovenian delegation walked out of the 14th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. In her speech, the newly minted candidate to succeed herself warned of the danger of populism, and her opponents convincingly illustrated the reasons for her concern in their reactions at the congress.

At the other end of the political spectrum, enthusiasm for Europe is lukewarm too. Levica (The Left) recently hosted the former leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, in Ljubljana. Let us leave aside the irony that, at a time of internal dispute with the leader of the party’s most left-wing faction, you invite as a guest a man who in 2015, as leader of his party’s most left-wing faction, took the helm of British Labour and thereby helped anchor it firmly in opposition for another decade. In 2020 he was thrown out of the party, but before that, with his positions on the EU, he contributed to Brexit almost as much as Boris Johnson.

Slovenian politics’ odd attitude toward the EU is also reflected in the profile of the people we send to represent us in Europe. To continue with Levica, it is worth recalling the former Spitzenkandidatin of the European Left in the previous European elections, Violeta Tomić. The center-left new faces also made some funny personnel decisions. In 2014 we sent Violeta Bulc to the Berlaymont palace in Brussels, where the European Commission sits. This trio fantastico is completed by the man who represented us for many years in an institution that is not part of the European Union but is nevertheless a very important part of the European institutional architecture. I am referring, of course, to Boštjan M. Zupančič, once the darling of the Slovenian liberal center, who, after the drudgery he had to endure in the service of protecting human rights at the Strasbourg court, found satisfaction and his true self in the most primitive misogyny and antisemitism.

This time, too, the list of candidates for MEP will not be without its oddballs. The doyen of Slovenian foreign-affairs journalism, longtime correspondent Uroš Lipušček, recently announced his intention to take to the European dance floor. His program for Europe, based on a return to nation-states, imitates on this point the sovereigntist agenda advocated in most European countries by the far right, from the Lepenists in France to the AfD in Germany. Even more interesting is Lipušček’s view of current crises in Europe, above all the war in Ukraine. In his opinion, Ukraine, with its impudent resistance to the Russian occupier, is merely prolonging its own suffering and ours. Putin is not an imperialist “because Russia already has enough territory.” In Lipušček’s view, the size of Russia’s territory also justifies the fact that Putin is a dictator, “since in a country as big as Russia, Western-style democracy cannot work.” I leave judgment of candidate Lipušček’s professional qualifications to others. As for his ideological orientation, it is distinctly off the hoof.

Who will represent us in Brussels and Strasbourg after the June elections has not yet been decided. According to the latest opinion polls ahead of the European elections, SDS is in the lead ahead of Svoboda, while Levica and the anti-vaxxer Resnica are battling for the last, ninth seat in the delegation. Personally, I wish the former more success, but it is ironic that it was precisely they who sent the first anti-vaxxer to Europe as a candidate for an even higher position.

If we draw a line under it all, after twenty years we Slovenians have an attitude toward Brussels similar to the one we once had toward Belgrade. We curse and criticize, but even where the criticism is justified we very rarely offer real answers. We don’t go to European elections because we couldn’t care less. We are more or less uninterested in what the people we elected do in parliament; all that gets up our noses is how much they earn. With honorable exceptions, we send village eccentrics to the Brussels institutions and then wonder why we lack the influence and reputation we want and expect. We trash the EU for everything it does wrong and for many things it isn’t responsible for. We aren’t interested in the successes and positive changes membership brings. In our fury we would smash everything we have with a sledgehammer, without a thought for what could happen to us if we succeeded.

This is far from saying that the EU does not deserve criticism and strict oversight. It has power, and any power you don’t keep a close eye on sooner or later goes bad. The democratic deficit is a real problem, and the solutions Brussels has offered so far, such as the much-vaunted Conference on the Future of Europe, have turned out to be more or less a token gesture and dust in our eyes. The European response to the 2009 financial crisis contributed in many ways to the situation that gives wings to far-right ideas. It can also be reproached for much regarding its attitude toward the tragedy in Gaza, although it is often criticized for things the member states deserve more. Among the politicians in Europe who most quickly and most decisively condemned the bloodshed caused by Israeli operations in Gaza was precisely the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell.

So the problem is not that we are critical of the EU, but that there is no serious reflection, debate or smart idea about solutions. Actually, the only original idea came from Borut Pahor, who until recently enthusiastically advocated a European federation, but for most experts on European affairs this proposal was too original to be taken seriously. When, years ago, someone at the Foreign Ministry informally asked me for my opinion on a draft of a new foreign-policy strategy, I pointed out that there was nothing in it about what kind of EU we stand for. “Oh, who’s going to ask us for our opinion anyway,” came the reply. And to be completely honest, we can’t hold that against them.