Speeches

Mr President, honourable Mr President-in-Office, honourable Commissioner, dear colleagues! For 27 years, Aliaksandr Lukashenka has been terrorizing, implementing his dictatorship with the clear support of the Kremlin, which means that Moscow also bears its share of responsibility. He is a dictator who terrorises not only his citizens, imprisons them, we have over 700 political prisoners, some are under the age of 18, violates universal human rights, organises elections, runs a regime based on the death penalty, but also terrorises the European Union. By becoming a human smuggler, more than 6,000 of them, we have heard, kidnapping European planes and the like. I am pleased to be part of this vast majority in the temple of European democracy today, which wants to send a clear and loud message to Minsk, that is to say, a strong, unified message, including a call to the Hague Court. Thank you very much.

Dear Madam President-in-Office, honourable representative of the Commission, Mr Šefčovič, honourable President Janša. First of all, thank you to President Janša for presenting the Presidency's programme. I think it's fairly balanced. On the one hand, there are some important, powerful points that touch on the issue of security, especially cyber security, and on the other, there are the policies and tasks that await us, especially in the digital and green transitions. However, there is not much time to talk about the programme, I would rather touch on or respond to some of the views of my colleague Fajon and colleague Grošelj and some of the others who are setting up the Slovenian government, presenting them as undemocratic, ineffective and the like. The facts are negating you. When the Slovenian centre-right government, in particular that of Mr Janša, was in power, the highest economic growth in Slovenia, the least unemployed, the welfare state was the strongest, and even the birth rate was significantly higher in those times. But if these facts do not convince you, let me say that the index of media freedom in Slovenia is also significantly higher during Janša's government and the index of democracy in Slovenia was also significantly higher during the period of centre-right governments.