Slovenia took the reins of the presidency of the European Union on Thursday and to say the least, the reception of the Commission was icy.
As our correspondent Anne Rovan, who attended the scene, recounts, the atmosphere was “polar” between President Janez Jansa and Ursula von der Leyen, during the joint press conference which started an hour late.
The speech by the President of the European Commission sounded less like encouragement than a series of warnings to the Slovenian Prime Minister, mainly on the rule of law.
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EU Presidency: Von der Leyen warns the Slovenian authorities
Ursula Von der Leyen and Janez Jansa, on July 1st during the icy press conference which launched the Slovenian presidency of the European Union.
SWEAR MAKOVEC / AFP
The character of Janez Jansa worries Brussels for several reasons:
First for his eruptive personality which regularly earned him to be compared to Donald Trump.
Like the ex-president of the United States, he tweeted easily and angry, which earned him the nickname "Marshal Twitto" in reference to Marshal Tito, who ruled communist Yugoslavia.
Janez Jansa also claims his ideological proximity to Donald Trump.
Like Viktor Orban in Hungary, he claims to be illiberalism.
This involves the showdown that he has been leading for months now against the new European public prosecutor's office, launched last March, whose appointment of Slovenian prosecutors he is blocking.
Some see this as revenge against these magistrates who took part in 2013 in an investigation launched against him for corruption during the public purchase of weapons.
This activism by Janez Jansa weakens the fight against corruption and fraud against European funds.
Last summer, he already obstructed the mechanism for conditioning European funds to respect for the rule of law.
I spoke to you in my last letter about the growing divide between Western Europe and an “Eastern front” federated around Viktor Orban.
Here is a new illustration.
However, these fears about Jansa's personality should be put into perspective, believes Lukas Macek, researcher associated with the Jacques Delors Institute.
"It
is not Orban who wants
", estimates the specialist of Central and Eastern Europe in
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