By: Sara Kovač (Nova24tv.si)
The European Commission will today publish a report on the rule of law in the EU member states and the results of monitoring changes in the rule of law within the Union, including developments in individual member states, including Slovenia. The report will also provide an assessment of the implementation of recommendations that the Commission presented for each member state for the first time last year. According to unofficial information from Brussels, Slovenia will receive an assessment of “improvement and progress” in certain areas in this year’s report, including media freedom and the judiciary system. MEP Milan Zver has pointed out the farce of the rule of law report, stating that the instrument of the rule of law has become the most transparent political tool of the European left and a farce of European institutions.
“Today, the European Commission will publish its annual report on the rule of law. Can you guess what it will say about Slovenia? Moderately positive. Can you guess who wrote it? Věra Jourová and Didier Reynders (both from Renew Europe). Among other things, the report will state: ‘In Slovenia, a new law was adopted that restructured the management of the public broadcaster and introduced safeguards for its independence,’” wrote Milan Zver.
Just a few days ago, Věra Jourová did not even know what was happening regarding the public broadcaster and how one of the most notorious cases of political takeover of media in Europe in 2023 unfolded, in which she was personally involved. She was still “waiting” for the decision of the Constitutional Court, although it had already ruled long ago. “Now she will write an opinion on it in the Rule of Law Report,” said the outraged MEP Romana Tomc.
The Rule of Law Report is a political document
How can the European Commission prepare a quality Rule of Law Report with such a lack of knowledge, which they will publish today? It becomes all the more clear that the Rule of Law Report is primarily a political document that will inevitably direct its criticism at known targets. It is a game of deflecting attention and blaming others for their own sins, Tomc criticises. However, because the government that violates the rule of law in Slovenia is politically close to Commissioner Věra Jourová, suddenly they do not want to hear many things.
“An opaque commissioner responsible for transparency in European institutions who, in five months, is unable to publish internal documents about her visit to Slovenia; a commissioner who publicly supports a constitutionally controversial law on RTV Slovenia; a commissioner who labels Janez Janša’s government as the reason for the decline in the rule of law and media freedom, despite the fact that Slovenia always progresses on global press freedom rankings during right-wing governments – she simply cannot be an impartial assessor of the rule of law in any EU member state,” Milan Zver wrote.
According to unofficial information, Slovenia will receive a moderately positive assessment from the European Commission in the Rule of Law Report, but the position of the largest European party, the EPP, is just the opposite, as Janez Janša pointed out. “In the next year’s European Parliament elections, we need to send the totalitarian leftist agenda, masked as Renew Europe, to the dustbin of history,” he added.
European Union citizens have realised this, and they no longer take this instrument (the Rule of Law Report) seriously, according to Zver. “That is why I also vote against these biased reports in the European Parliament.”