Overview of the week's top stories
since 22 March 2003

On Sunday, March 23, Slovenes went to the polls to vote in simultaneous referenda on the country’s entry into Nato and the EU. According to the State Election Commission (RVK), 89.61 percent voted in favor of joining the EU, and 66.05 percent for Nato.

Just 10.39 percent voted against joining the EU, while 33.95 voted against Nato membership. A total of 972,333 voted on EU membership. Slightly fewer, 972,308, voted on Nato. A further 2022 voted on the EU by post; 1588 mailed in votes on Nato. Additionally, 6118 voters participated in the two referenda at 35 Slovene diplomatic sites around the world.

A total of 1,609,541 were eligible to vote, and turnout was 60.31 percent – exceptionally high for a referendum. The June 2001 referendum on artificial insemination saw a turnout rate of just 35.7 percent; February 2003 referenda on the rail and telecommunications systems saw rates of around 30 percent each. On the other hand, the turnout rate for last weekend’s referenda was low in comparison to past elections.

While EU accession had wide approval all along, Nato membership was highly controversial. The Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ) – of which Slovenia was a constituent republic from 1945 to 1991 – was a member of neither Nato nor the Warsaw Pact, instead leading the Non-Aligned Movement on the sidelines of the Cold War.

The recent start of war in Iraq raised fears that the referendum on Nato membership would fail. Antiwar protests last week had a strong anti-NATO sentiment, and 79.5 percent of those asked in a poll published Saturday in the daily Dnevnik opposed the war.

On Wednesday, Nato ambassadors signed protocols on the entry of seven new states into the defense organization at its headquarters in Brussels. Foreign minister Dimitrij Rupel signed the protocol on Slovene entry on the basis of the official results of Sunday’s referendum.

Immediately upon signing the protocol, Slovenia became an observer without voting rights in the working bodies of the alliance, with the exception of those bodies dealing with expansion and nuclear policy.

The protocols must now be ratified by all seven candidate countries as well as by all existing Nato members. The process should be completed within one year. All seven candidates, among them Slovenia, are expected to officially join Nato next May.

Rupel is expected to sign Slovenia’s accession agreement with the European Union on 16 April in Athens. Just as with Nato, Slovenia will become an observer without voting rights in the organization’s working bodies. Once the accession agreements are ratified by the European Parliament and by the parliaments of the 25 member states and candidate countries, the country will become a full-fledged member of the EU. That process should also be completed by the middle of next year.

On 27 March, Reuters reported that the United States has not only included Slovenia in a list of its "Coalition of the Willing," but has also offered up of a portion of the USD 75 billion allotted for the war. The offer amounts to some USD 4.5 million. However, according to Prime Minister Anton Rop, "We are a part of no such coalition. We are a part of a coalition for peace."

At a "hastily arranged news conference," Rop said that "the State Department told us we were named in the document by mistake as we are not a member of the coalition against Iraq." Rop confirmed that the country will not accept the money.

STA reported, however, that the Pentagon is maintaining that there was no error. Slovenia has aligned itself with the War on Terror, even though it remains unclear what role it has in the Iraq conflict, they explained.

At least one hundred people gathered in front of the parliament building in Ljubljana to protest the news. On 17 March, US Representative from Illinois Henry Hyde also included Slovenia in a list of the members of the coalition, which raised eyebrows in Ljubljana. That error led many to wonder if the government were supporting the war in secret, possibily in order to avoid a negative public reaction in the run up to the referendum on Nato membership.

From Monday to Thursday, journalists at Radio Dva in Austria’s Carinthia (Koroška) province were on a hunger strike, protesting the on-going financial problems which threaten to silence the station. Until January, Radio Dva was sponsored by the Austrian government via national broadcaster ORF and provided 24-hour Slovene-language radio for the country’s ethnic Slovene minority.

Station officials explained that the hunger strike was called off thanks to positive signs emanating from Vienna, particularly the Wednesday session of the ORF council, which promised a new Slovene-language radio station. The decision was confirmed on Thursday in meetings between ethnic Slovene leaders and members of the Austrian federal government and other politicians.

Seven students joined in the hunger strike. They are members of the Carinthian Students Union, which staged protests in support of Radio Dva last week. This was the second hunger strike at the station; the first took place in February.

According to the station, its financial situation is so dire that it may declare bankruptcy in early April. None of its employees have been paid since January. They currently receive unemployment benefits, but that will run out at the end of March.

Good news also came from Carinthia this week, when it was announced that a new weekly Slovene-language magazine will appear in April. The new magazine unites the weekly organs of the province’s two leading Slovene organizations, the National Council of Carinthian Slovenes (NSKS) and the Federation of Slovene Organizations (ZSO).

The new weekly will be independent of both groups. An organization called SLOMedia has been created to produce the newspaper. SLOMedia also plans to expand its services into the internet with a bilingual German and Slovene portal, which will also contain a German-language version of the magazine.