Page 48 - bne magazine February 2022_20220208

48 I OUTLOOK 2022 bne February 2022
SLOVENIA
Slovenia is heading towards general elections in spring 2022. This will pit the government led by Prime Minister Janez Jansa – who critics say is taking Slovenia down the same illiberal route as Hungary and Poland – against the opposition parties determined to unseat him.
The pressure on Jansa to resign stepped up in 2021, with the opposition parties accusing him of degrading Slovenia’s democracy, not respecting the rule of law and tightening his grip on the media. He has also clashed several times with EU officials. President Borut Pahor plans to call a general election for April 24 as the earliest possible date and to sign a decree on the election date in February.
Four opposition parties, the List of Marjan Sarec (LMS), Social Democrats (SD), Levica (the Left) and Alenka Bratusek’s Party (SAB), signed a cooperation agreement on September 28, agreeing to form a government without Jansa’s rightwing Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) should they gain enough votes in the next general election.
Under the deal the opposition parties agreed to “normalise” Slovenia, to form a government without
the ruling SDS and the parties supporting it, and that
a prime minister-designate will be put forward by the participating party which has won the most votes. Levica described Jansa’s government as destructive and anti- democratic, and accused it of pursuing far-right policies.
Jansa came to power in March 2020 after the resignation of Marjan Sarec at the end of January 2020. The government consisted of the SDS, the Modern Centre Party (SMC), New Slovenia (NSi) and the Pensioners’ Party (DeSUS), but DeSUS left the coalition in December 2020 due to disagreements with Jansa.
Ahead of new elections in 2022, support for Slovenia’s minority government has been falling. The most recent public opinion poll conducted by Mediana Institute showed that only 16.3% of respondents would support the SDS, while 59.7% of them rate the work of the government negatively.
Under Jansa, Ljubljana has frequently been in conflict with EU institutions, which came under the spotlight during Slovenia's six-month EU Council presidency in the second half of 2021. Recently, Slovenia has been criticised by EU officials for the delay in appointing two European delegated prosecutors (EDPs) and for cutting funding for news agency STA. The two EDPs were finally appointed by the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) on November 24.
Jansa’s government cut off funding for STA at the end of 2020, after the prime minister accused it of unfair reporting. STA is supposed to receive funds for its public service activities. The European Commission has repeatedly expressed serious concerns about this issue.
The finances were restored in November 2021, when the new acting director of STA Igor Kadunc and the head of the Government Communication Office (UKOM) Uros Urbanija signed a deal on the provision of STA's public service, valid until the end of 2021.
During 2021, protests against anti-COVID-19 measures imposed by the government were frequent in Slovenia.
The government has been tightening measures and is trying to get more people vaccinated to prevent the spread of the pandemic after it faced a severe fourth wave of COVID-19 epidemic in October and November 2021 that peaked at over 4,000 daily cases on November 17.
Following the spring general election, Slovenia will hold presidential and local elections in the autumn.
Presidential elections are due in October 2022. The incumbent Pahor is ineligible to run as he has served two five-year terms.
Local elections have a fixed date on the third Sunday
of November. The local elections rarely reflect political realities at the national level as many candidates in the country’s 212 municipalities are elected from local lists without a firm party affiliation, or from smaller parties that are not represented in parliament. In the last election, the People's Party (SLS) ended with the largest number of mayors despite being absent from national politics since 2014.
Macroeconomy
Growth is set to moderate in 2022 following strong GDP growth figures in 2021 from the low base in 2020.
The European Commission has downgraded Slovenia’s GDP growth forecast for 2022 by 0.9 pp to 4.2% and growth is expected to slow down further in 2023 to 3.5%, following projected growth of 6.4% in 2021.
For 2022 the IMF projection for Slovenia’s economic growth was lifted by 0.1 of a percentage point (pp) to 4.6%.
In the first nine months of 2021, Slovenia's GDP expanded by an annual 7.4% and domestic demand is expected to remain the main growth driver.
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