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Slovenia Political Briefing: Candidates for European Parliament Elections Helena Motoh

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Slovenia Political Briefing: Candidates for European Parliament Elections Helena Motoh ISSN: 2560-1601 Vol. 18, No. 1 (SI) May 2019 Slovenia political briefing: Candidates for European Parliament elections Helena Motoh 1052 Budapest Petőfi Sándor utca 11. +36 1 5858 690 Kiadó: Kína-KKE Intézet Nonprofit Kft. [email protected] Szerkesztésért felelős személy: Chen Xin Kiadásért felelős személy: Huang Ping china-cee.eu 2017/01 Candidates for European Parliament elections Summary Elections for the Slovenian members on the new European Parliament will take place on Sunday, May 26th. Political parties have - either alone or in coalitions - already presented their candidate lists with several surprising choices. The campaign, which has already started, will mostly focus on the issues of migrations, future of EU, Eurozone, the role of Slovenia in EU and the relations between member states, while also paying attention to the issues of the perspectives of European integrations in the Balkans. Background: Elections of Slovenian Members of European Parliament In Slovenia, the Elections for European Parliament of 2019 will take place on May 26th. The elections were called by the President Borut Pahor in February with the final date for submission of candidatures on April 27th. As one election unit, Slovenian voters will be choosing between 14 candidate lists and 103 candidates. The right to vote and to be elected belongs to all Slovenian citizens and equally to all EU citizens who reside in Slovenia. Candidates can be nominated by either political parties or voters, while each list is limited to the number of MEP Slovenia is electing, namely eight. The obligatory gender quota for both genders is minimum 40%. Election system is proportionate with the preference vote. Therefore the mandates are not distributed according to the order of candidates on the candidate list, but first according to the preference votes and only then according to the order provided on the candidate list. While it is therefore important who the head of the candidate list is, it is not necessarily the most renowned person in the list, who often is listed further down on the list. It was already the case in previous European Parliament elections, that due to the preferential vote the MEP seat was actually given not to the head of the list, but to a better-known candidate from the bottom of the list. Being a member of European Union since May 1st 2004, Slovenia has elected seven Members of European Parliament for the first time on June 13 that year. Along with European People's Party winning the elections, Slovenian right-wing parties New Slovenia also got the biggest part of the votes and 2 MEP, followed by Liberal Democrats (also 2 MEP) and Slovenian Democratic Party (2 MEP), while Social Democrats got 1 MEP. In June 2009 1 European Parliamentary elections, Slovenia was still electing 7 members of parliament, until the Lisbon Agreement entered into force, after which an additional MEP was added to the list of 7. Similarly to the 2004 elections, shares were almost equally divided between the right wing and the left wing parties, with Slovenian Democratic Party getting 3 (2+1) MEP, Social Democrats getting 3 MEP, and two other left-centre groups (Liberal Democrats and coalition ZARES+DeSUS) got one MEP each and 1 MEP belonged to the New Slovenia Party. The pattern which can be discerned in the first two European Elections, namely that the distribution of support on the national elections and in the government does not reflect in the results of European Elections, held true just as well for the third European Parliament elections in 2014. While the government was held by the technical government of Alenka Bratušek and the following term of the centre-left Miro Cerar Party, the right wing parties from the Janša coalition which had to step down in 2013, still got 5 of 8 MEP (Slovenian Democrats got 3 and Slovenian People's Party and New Slovenia got 1 MEP each). The turnout on European elections is lowering and from the initial turnout slightly over 28% in 2004, Slovenian turnout was 24.5% in 2014.Similar trends can be observed in European Union as a whole. Candidate lists Most of the 14 candidate lists reflect the structure of political parties. All the coalition parties are present with their own lists. Before February this year, there were talks between the three most centre oriented coalition partners, Prime Minister’s Marjan Šarec List (LMŠ), former Prime Minister Miro Cerar’s Modern Centre Party (SMC) and another former Prime Minister’s Alenka Bratušek Party (SAB) about the forming of a coalition for the upcoming European Parliament elections. It was speculated in media that the disagreements about the order of the candidates on the list brought these talks to a close and now each of these three political parties is competing with its separate list. Marjan Šarec List, part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group, will run for European Parliament elections for the first time. They decided to give the prestigious position of the head of the candidate list to Irena Joveva, a journalist with no considerable background in politics, whose candidature was a great surprise. Another telling candidate choice on their list is that of Klemen Grošelj, a well-known defence expert. Most probably Šarec’s party will try to use Grošelj to counterbalance the claims of the right wing parties about the security risks Slovenia might be facing due to migrations. As of now, the main point in their 2 European Elections campaign seems to be a clear pro-EU orientation with rather vague demands for a reform of the functioning of the union towards a better EU. The Modern Centre Party of Miro Cerar, also a member of ALDE group is running for the EP elections for the first time as well, since it was established a month after the last European Parliament elections. The initial ambition of the party was to have their list presented by the current European Commissioner for transport, Violeta Bulc, otherwise a member of Modern Centre Party, which was turned down by Commissioner Bulc. The head of the list now is Gregor Perič, Modern Centre Party’s Member of Parliament, with a background in local politics. The party’s main political positions for the European elections focus on the improved status of Slovenia within EU and on the European level, on the ecologically sustainable future of EU and the values of political liberalism, freedom of speech and media etc. After the failure of coalition negotiations, Alenka Bratušek Party (also ALDE) is also running for elections on its own. The choice of their head of list is surprising, but understandable for such a small political party. They chose a Slovenian politician from Austria, who is currently a Member of European Parliament, Angelika Mlinar. This attempt to present high-level politicians, who are seemingly not contaminated by the topics and conflicts of the Slovenian politics, is seen by many as a clever tactics. This might especially be needed due to the unsuccessful attempt of the party’s president in 2014 to become a commissioner in Juncker’s European Commission after a failed hearing. Mlinar has also contributes to a stronger voice of the SAB party in the campaign, since she is especially strongly opposing the populist rhetoric and politics in the neighbouring countries. Other two coalition parties, Slovenian Pensioners’ Party, which is also part of the ALDE group and Social Democrats, who belong to the Party of European Socialists, will also run separately. Social Democrats chose a current MEP from their political party, Tanja Fajon, to be the head of the list, with several other well-known politicians on the list, most notably the former Speaker of the Parliament, Milan Brglez, and former Minister of Defence, Ljubica Jelušič. DeSUS decided to partner with another current MEP who ran with his own list in 2014, Igor Šoltes, who is now the head of DeSUS candidate list. The focus of both Social Democrats’ and DeSUS’ programmes for European Elections are on the open and inclusive EU with emphasis on social security and social justice while also focusing on the issues of environment protection. The partnering party The Left (Levica), the left-most parliamentary party and member of European Left, will also run independently with Violeta Tomič as the head of the list, while their president Luka Mesec is also included lower on the list, 3 Among the right wing parties, members of European People’s Party group, there were initially several plans for coalitions, most notably of the one between Christian democrat New Slovenia Party (NSi) and Slovenian People’s Party. After this plan ended with New Slovenia submitting its independent candidature, the coalition was formed between Slovenian Democratic Party of Janša and the Slovenian People’s Party. New Slovenia list is led by Ljudmila Novak, its former president, while also including the current MEP Lojze Peterle. SDS+SLS coalition list is led by another current MEP, Milan Zver and the list includes three other current MEP from both parties. The programmes of the NSi and SDS+SLS largely overlap, with more extreme positions on migration and slight Euroscepticism on the side of the Slovenian Democrats. The programme of extreme-right Slovenian National Party (SNS), whose list is led by Zmago Jelinčič, also a current MP is also extremely anti-immigration but also even more openly eurosceptical. Similar views are held and promoted by a newly established extreme right movement Dom (Patriotic League), whose list of only four members is led by its president Bernard Brščič followed by the second protagonist of the party, Lucija Ušaj Šikovec. Even less candidates, only three, can be found on the list of extreme-right wing United Slovenia Movement (ZSI), whose president and the head of the candidate list, Andrej Šiško, was recently brought to the court for organizing an armed paramilitary unit, which allegedly planned to overthrow the government.
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