Mladina: Police found EU Commission dictated bank bailout in criminal fashion
STA, 3 May 2019 - Lies, Lies, It's All Lies, reads the title of the latest Mladina editorial, which comments on the findings of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) probe into the 2013 bank bailout. According to the left-leaning weekly, the European Commission determined the value of Slovenia's allegedly bankrupt banks without any sort of methodology.
Commenting on what appears to be a leaked criminal complaint filed by the NBI last December against the entire former board of Banka Slovenije, Mladina's editor Grega Repovž says a long time has passed since the emergence of a document that would reveal the actual methods of the European Commission so clearly.
Repovž says the report of the NBI probe - over which Slovenia is being sued by the European Commission - into what was happening at the Slovenian central bank before the bailout reads like a conspiracy theory or a script for a bad movie and warrants a European investigation into the Commission's workings.
Repovž says officials in Slovenia were initially resisting pressure from the Commission to wind up recapitalisation needs but eventually caved in and started to focus on covering the tracks, thus becoming complicit in a crime.
The value of the banks was actually determined by the Commission, which ignored all the actual findings and failed to explain its methodology.
Slovenian police were hoping to find the contentious methodology that would explain the final figures but their eventual discovery was the worst possible - there was no methodology.
"We declared three banks, which were actually not in such a bad state, as bankrupt, pumped EUR 4.78bn into them ... and then accepted the commitment to sell these falsely bankrupt banks," Repovž says.
He argues that it seems Slovenia was truly being used as a guinea pig for enforcing the bail-in principle and for preventing a joint shouldering of the burdens of troubled countries.
However, while NKBM and NLB, stuffed with excess capital from the bailout, were privatised in line with promises given to the Commission, Prime Minister Marjan Šarec cannot continue pretending old commitments need to be honoured and ignore the findings of the probe as Slovenia is in the process of also selling Abanka.
Note – The STA didn’t provide a summary of Demokracja’s editorial this week, but the following is from last week’s Reporter, another right-wing weekly.
Reporter: Unlikely Homeland League will take away SDS votes
STA, 23 April 2019 - Commenting on the ongoing EU election race, the weekly Reporter says in its latest editorial that the newly-established party Homeland League (DOM) is not likely to eat away votes to the opposition Democrats (SDS).
According to the latest poll by Mediana, the Slovenian right will be defeated on the election Sunday, 26 May, as the lists of the SDS and the non-parliamentary People's Party (SLS) as well as the opposition New Slovenia (NSi) are projected to win only three MEP seats, editor-in-chief Silvester Šurla says.
The joint SDS-SLS slate is expected to win the most votes, but only two of Slovenia's eight MEP seats. It could also win a third one by a hair's breadth, just like the SDS did five years ago.
Perhaps it will also manage to win three seats this year because of the alliance with the SLS. However, according to the latest polls, winning four MEPs is not likely, Šurla notes.
The NSi is also not likely to repeat its historic victory from 2004, when the first European election was held in Slovenia and the party won as many as two MEPs.
In the end, the left and right may very well each win four seats, just like ten years ago, Šurla says under the headline Race for Million Euro.
The centre-left has slightly more voters although they are inclined to change party preferences. Most of them currently favour the coalition Social Democrats (SD), which are projected to win two MEPs, while the senior coalition Marjan Šarec List (LMŠ) and the opposition Left would each get one.
Meanwhile, voters of the centre-right, are much more decided. This is why Šurla expects no major flow of SDS voters to the Homeland League, which does not even appear in opinion polls yet.
Perhaps, DOM could cost the SDS-SLS list of candidates only the third potential MEP seat, Šurla concludes.
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