STA, 1 July 2021 - The centre-left opposition has rejected the coalition's call for a political truce during Slovenia's EU presidency. They are determined to continue to use all the available means at their disposal and are not ruling out a new attempt at a vote of no confidence.
The Marjan Šarec List (LMŠ) says that if they gave up the instruments at their disposal as the largest opposition party they would also give up democracy.
"When the constitution and laws are being kept violated, when media freedom and fiscal stability are being threatened, when experts and civilian society are not being let to participate in environment legislation, when the government forgets about the problems of children and youth resulting from the epidemic, it's the duty of the opposition not to keep quiet, regardless of the presidency," LMŠ deputy group leader Brane Golubovič said on Thursday as Slovenia formally assumed the rotating EU presidency.
He believes Slovenia will carry out its presidency tasks correctly in technical terms owning to the professionalism of Slovenian diplomats and technical officials.
Similarly, the Left said it "could not and must not" change its positions about the the ruling coalition's record in office for the sake of the presidency with deputy Matej Tašner Vatovec saying Slovenia still needed an early election.
The party criticised the national recovery and resilience plan, which the European Commission approved today, saying it "confounds every vision and all basic principles of democracy".
The Alenka Bratušek Party (SAB) would like the government to successfully perform its tasks during the presidency because that would benefit Slovenia's reputation. "We are afraid, however, that this government has already made a negative mark in Europe due to all the statements, letters, tweets and mainly actions," SAB deputy leader Maša Kociper said.
She said the opposition would continue to "keep an eye on the government" and they were not ruling out a vote of no confidence if all opposition parties agreed on the motion.
In a somewhat different vein, Tanja Fajon, the leader of the Social Democrats (SD), wished for Slovenia to use the presidency to "mitigate the disastrous impression it has made in Europe in the past year" in the spirit of European values and solidarity.
In a video address on her Twitter profile, Fajon said Slovenia's international reputation was at its lowest ever. "Due to the prime ministers' actions [Slovenia] has been treated on several occasions as a country that has been straying aside from the European path and values."
[NAPOVED] Digitalna izjava @tfajon (S&D/SD) ob 10. uri o začetku predsedovanja Slovenije Svetu EU. https://t.co/uMx54lWaOU
— Socialni demokrati (@strankaSD) July 1, 2021
She said it was dangerous that the violations seen in Hungary and Poland were being promoted in Slovenia.
She would like for the Slovenian presidency to contribute to enhancing recovery and resilience so that Europe to revive its vision as the world's greenest and most innovative economy, but she believes it would take different ambitions to achieve those goals than the ones that the government showed in the national recovery and resilience plan.
