Slovenia Ratifies Croatian NATO Entry
Yesterday Slovenian President Danilo Türk signed the Law on ratification of Croatian entry into NATO. This ended almost two months of speculation which started after Janez Janša refused to support the entry if the coalition didn’t support a cooked-up version of 2007 Annual Account. This was followed by a referendum petition which brought together serial petitioners, hooligans and self-proclaimed defenders of Slovene border and nearly caused a major international embarrassment for Slovenia, despite the fact that Croatian government did a lot to prove the petitioners’ point.
In any case, the referendum petition failed spectacularly as Party of Slovene Nation (the petitioners) collected only around 1100 signatures supporting their bid, which probably causes top echelons of Slovenian politics to give an audible sigh of relief. The whole episode was enough, however, to re-ignite the debate on referendum legislation where things are far from over.
All that’s left now is Croatian EU bid, where Slovenia and Croatia have a slightly bigger problem.
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
