{"id":1884,"date":"2021-07-08T09:36:40","date_gmt":"2021-07-08T08:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/?p=1884"},"modified":"2025-05-24T09:43:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-24T08:43:40","slug":"slovenian-pm-janez-jansa-denounces-brussels-imaginary-values","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/2021\/07\/08\/slovenian-pm-janez-jansa-denounces-brussels-imaginary-values\/","title":{"rendered":"Slovenian PM Janez Jan\u0161a denounces Brussels\u2019 \u201cimaginary values\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slovenia\/European<\/strong>\u00a0Union<\/strong>\u2013\u00a0As we recently reported,\u00a0Slovenia\u2019s presidency of the European Union, which we predicted would be stormy and marred by conflict, is indeed off to a flying start, and the EU\u2019s leaders in Brussels have not been mistaken in seeing in Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jan\u0161a an adversary of the calibre of his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orb\u00e1n.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t judge a person based on imaginary European values\u201d<\/strong><\/h4>\n

At a time when European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen was announcing,\u00a0 on 2 July, that Hungary had been served with a formal notice for violating the protection of sexual minorities because of its\u00a0child protection law\u00a0adopted on 15 June by the National Assembly in Budapest, explaining that \u201cThe debate is about the fact that Hungarian law discriminates against a minority, which is prohibited by the<\/em>\u00a0EU\u00a0 Treaty<\/em>\u201d, and at a time when Von der Leyen is also considering taking legal action against Poland because of the so-called \u201cLGBT ideology-free zones\u201d, the incoming president of the EU Council was keen to remind Brussels leaders of the dangers of \u201cdouble standards<\/em>\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t judge a person based on imaginary European values, and if dual standards are used, then I think this is the fastest road to collapse.<\/em>\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

Jan\u0161a based his warning on the Yugoslav precedent, which he knows well: \u201cUp to 30 years ago Slovenia lived in the former Yugoslavia and it was supposedly federal.<\/em>.\u00a0There were five or six nations, three religions, six republics, two autonomous provinces, and the country fell apart for different reasons, but the last nail in the coffin was when some people started using special criteria for themselves, applying double standards.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe European Union brings together countries with different traditions\u201d<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Thus, from the very beginning of Slovenia\u2019s presidency of the EU, Janez Jan\u0161a has taken up the role of Central Europe\u2019s advocate, defending the right to different views within the European Union:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe EU without central Europe is not a European union \u2013 it will be just a shell and we should all be aware of it<\/em>\u201d,<\/p>\n

he warned, implicitly supporting Budapest and Warsaw. \u201cThe European Union brings together countries with different traditions, with different cultures, so this all rests on the fundamental European civilizations,<\/em><\/p>\n

but there are differences that need to be taken into account and respected, and I think there\u2019s a clear division between national and European competences.<\/em><\/p>\n

[\u2026]\u00a0I do not believe in stigmatizing anyone in Europe or in the European family, whether it is a member state of the European Union or its leader\u00a0<\/em>[\u2026]\u00a0I cannot agree to the division between liberal and illiberal democracy.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0[\u2026]\u00a0Democracy is democracy<\/em>\u00a0[\u2026]\u00a0We are trying to warn everyone against double standards<\/em>\u00a0[\u2026]\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

We are not a colony. We are not a second-class member of the European\u00a0<\/em>Union [\u2026]\u00a0We insist that we\u00a0ought to get the same treatment.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yes, there are attempts to ensure that at least the small countries of the European Union are treated as second-class members. We left\u00a0<\/em>[Yugoslavia]\u00a0of which we were a part because we\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0were treated as second class<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t notice he was missing\u201d<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Commenting on the fact that European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans had declined to appear in the \u201cfamily photo\u201d on 1 July as a form of protest against him, Janez Jan\u0161a simply said: \u201cI have to say that I didn\u2019t really notice at the time. There were many of us standing on the podium, I didn\u2019t notice that he was missing. I heard today that he was not there<\/em>\u2026\u00a0During this talk, we also had some specific questions concerning the rule of law and we provided our answers to those questions<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n

If the Vice-President of the European Commission\u00a0took offence at these answers, then it should be said that it was not us who started the discussion, we only wanted to explain the situation. And if you dislike the truth, then this is actually your problem, this is not a problem with the truth.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slovenia\/European\u00a0Union\u2013\u00a0As we recently reported,\u00a0Slovenia\u2019s presidency of the European Union, which we predicted would be stormy and marred by conflict, is indeed off to a flying start, and the EU\u2019s leaders in Brussels have not been mistaken in seeing in Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jan\u0161a an adversary of the calibre of his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orb\u00e1n.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}