EU | SLEEPING WITH PENGOVSKY

One Queen To Rule Them All

At first glance, the passing of Queen Elizabeth II does not seem especially pertinent to the politics of Muddy Hollows. In fact, other than a couple of boilerplate expressions of condolences by the nation’s highest elected officials and a botched (and then deleted) tweet by the Glorious Leader, the death of the worlds longest-serving monarch in, like, ever, was primarily a media fascination.

Queen Elizabeth II during her tour of Slovenian capital Ljubljana (photo by pengovsky) — *Queen Elizabeth during her tour of Ljubljana (source: The Firm(tm))*

That is not to say, however, the late queen and Slovenia never crossed paths. Fourteen years ago, Her Majesty popped over for a three-day state visit. The occasion was correctly seen as a major diplomatic success for a country that had joined the EU and NATO only four years earlier.

Janez Janša And The China Clusterfuck

Every time pengovsky does a series of posts on the state of things in Slovenia, shit happens to interrupt the regular programming. And this time, boy did the excrement hit the oscillator. The story of course is PM Janša’s recent interview for an Indian state TV. The whole things a sight to see, but money-quotes include the Glorious Leader lambasting China for its handling of the epidemic and standing up for Lithuania after the EU member opened a trade office in Taiwan.

PM Janša in a TV interview, talking about China and Taiwan, among other things.

So far so good. The part about the pandemic is a bit impolitic, but OK. He went on to say that Slovenia will follow Lithuania and open its own office in Taipei. Which… um… Right? But then he said “he’d support the sovereign decision of the Taiwanese people to decide for themselves how they want to live”. Not surprisingly, the Chinese foreign office blew its stack. Thus Glorious Leader landed Muddy Hollows in another diplomatic dumpster fire.

Batting for Hungarian Homophobe, Marshal Twito Imperils Slovenian EU Presidency

Janez Janša saw the 30th anniversary of Slovenian independence as something of a personal milestone. He is the only senior figure of the 1991 independence struggle who is still in public service. Everyone else is either retired, dead or in prison. It was to be a joyous occasion, crowned a few days later by Muddy Hollows taking over EU Council presidency.

Marshal Twito falsely accusing Delo's Brussels correspondent of lying. — *Janez Janša falsely accusing Delo’s Brussels correspondent of lying*

Instead, the Glorious Leader spent the anniversary week doing some light LGBT-bashing on the EU stage. With this, he was paying fealty to his Lord Protectór and then denied all of it, only to be, well, outed by none other than Luxembourg PM Xavier Bettel. Awkward.

A Blessing In Disguise

The faces were long and the statements short in Muddy Hollows on Friday, after the top EU court nixed the Slovenian motion to find Croatia is breaking EU legislation by refusing to enact the arbitration award in the border dispute between the two countries.

Top EU court nixes Slovenia over jurisdiction to force Croatia to implement the arbitration award but tells both countries to get their respective acts together — *Slovenian flag in front of the EU Court of Justice (source)*

As both readers know, an arbitration tribunal ruled on border demarcation between the two countries in mid-2017 in an award that went largely in Slovenia’s favour, but Croatia refused to acknowledge the result claiming that the process had been irreparably tainted.

Keeping The Eye On The Ball

Pengovsky was about to write up the fifth (and possibly last) installment of the Clearly, No-one Was Thinking series, when Angelika Mlinar was somewhat unexpectedly not green-lighted as minister for EU cohesion funds by the relevant parliamentary committees.

*Angelika Mlinar during her committee hearing (source: Matija Sušnik/Nat’l Assembly)*

The one thing that stood out as a sore thumb was the fact that it was not her credentials that were debated but rather her national loyalties. In fact, what we witnessed in the committee hearing on Tuesday was a mix of latent nationalism and sexism, with some internal party strife to boot.