By: Moja Dolenjska
The casual lying that Prime Minister Robert Golob has engaged in for almost his entire term has clearly spread to his ministers as well. In a recent interview with the German Deutsche Welle, Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon also told a blatant lie.
In the interview, journalist Richard Walker first confronted Tanja Fajon with the fact that, according to NATO data, Slovenia currently allocates only 1.3% of its GDP to defence. He then asked whether Slovenia is still committed to honouring the new agreements it signed at last month’s NATO summit. Fajon replied that Slovenia would allocate 2% of GDP for defence by the end of the year, and 3% by 2030. “But in Slovenia, this is a very difficult debate. At the NATO summit, we also stated that we will make every effort and try our best to meet the target. For us, the main questions are how to spend this money and how not to cut into the welfare state. But as I said, we need to do more, and we are ready to do more,” she said.
She repeated several times that the government had committed only through a document projecting a 3% increase, but in doing so, she lied outright. The document signed by Slovenia and other NATO members commits them to allocate 5% of GDP to defence by 2035. NATO’s press office confirmed this to our portal.
The interview was also noteworthy in that Fajon described Levica, a party in the ruling coalition, as far left. When asked why her party, the SD, decided to support Levica’s initiative for a referendum on defence spending, she answered that it was an “internal political debate within the ruling coalition.” “No one is questioning whether it is right for us to be a NATO member. Personally, I do not, nor does our party. But within the coalition, we have one party that from the very beginning has been against any debate about NATO or its membership. It is a far-left party. But we will certainly resolve this debate,” she said.
However, the journalist dismissed her excuse that this was merely an internal political issue, stating: “If one NATO member is wavering between maintaining membership and increasing defence spending, and is even proposing a referendum on membership, that cannot be considered just an internal political matter.”
He added that this could have major consequences for all NATO members. “You are playing political games with the defence and security of Europe and NATO!” he told her.