Overview of the week's top stories since 17 Jan. 2004

This week’s headlines…

• EU minister named candidate for EU commissioner

• Police, prosecutor infringe on Ombudsman’s Office

• National Council meets in Novo Mesto

• Austrians first foreign investors in SLO media

• Radio Marš returns!

• Delo regional daily plan appears dead

And in other news…

• Two-year lag in Slovene internet use over European average

• Ecstasy lab discovered in Portorož

• Galerija MGLC hosts alternative press symposium

• Ljubljana Calling starts publication

• Balkan News Network to debut next month

EU minister named candidate for EU commissioner

On Wednesday, 21 January, Prime Minister Anton Rop announced that he has named European Affairs Minister Janez Potočnik Slovenia’s first candidate for the post of European Commissioner. Although European Commission (EC) President Romano Prodi suggested – and opposition leaders demanded – that three candidates be named, it appears that Rop only intends to offer up one.

Potočnik has been heavily involved in Slovenia’s negotiations towards European Union membership. He expressed his satisfaction with the news to Radio Slovenija, saying that “[w]ork at the Commission will surely be demanding professionally. It is clearly a challenge that is hard to turn down.”

EC spokesperson Reijo Kemppinen said this is “happy news” and that Potočnik is an “excellent candidate”. EC Head of Mission to Slovenia Erwan Fouere was also pleased by the news, adding that Potočnik is a “true European.”

Potočnik is expected to be confirmed by EC President Prodi by the end of January, once candidates from all ten acceding countries are proposed. Commissioners will be named for each of the ten new member countries to serve a term from 1 May to 1 November 2004, when new commissioners will be named in all 25 member states to a full five-year term.

Police, prosecutor infringe on Ombudsman’s Office

At a press conference on 20 January, Ombudsman for Human Rights Matjaž Hanžek announced that he formally requested an explanation from the state prosecutor’s office last week in connection with a police investigation against prominent lawyer Peter Čeferin and a member of his own staff.

In a letter dated 14 January, Hanžek asked State Prosecutor Zdenko Cerar to explain why it appears that the police and local State Prosecutor Matija Benulič overstepped their authority in prosecuting a defendant represented by Čeferin. Hanžek believes that the police and local prosecutor used unethical and illegal methods against Čeferin, as well as against Polona Selič, an independent advisor in the Office of the Ombudsman for Human Rights, in order to secure a conviction against Čeferin’s client.

Hanžek stated that he will inform European Ombudsman for Human Rights Nikiforos Diamandouros of the situation. Diamandouros is expected to arrive in Ljubljana on Monday for a two-day official visit. The press conference was held to both give details about Diamandouros’s visit as well as to respond to the parliamentary opposition’s demands that Hanžek make public all information he had regarding the Čeferin and Selič incidents.

Hanžek is particularly troubled that the situation, particularly as regards Selič, could call into question the independence of his office. Hу stated that, “according to all of the information available, this is the first time the police have taken special measures against an employee of the Ombudsman’s Office, and these steps taken by the police and state prosecutor as investigative organs without legal basis could represent a gross encroachment on the work of the constitutional institution of the independent ombudsman for human rights, and so I expect that Cerar will investigate the affair to the greatest extent possible and will inform me of the reasons for the steps taken by the police and the prosecutors office.” Cerar has yet to issue a response.

National Council meets in Novo Mesto

On 22 January, the National Council met for the first time outside of Ljubljana, in Novo Mesto. The meeting focused on regional development and employment policies, and was held in the Dolenjska capital in the spirit of decentralization.

At the meeting, Minister without Portfolio for Regional Development Zdenka Kovač presented a report on Slovenia’s regions and provided her views on balanced regional development, as well as on the next level of the reform of local self-administration. She gave much emphasis to the creation of a Regional Development Council and a Development Union of Towns, which will be formed to represent the new development regions. She stressed once again that the development regions are not to be administrative regions.

Minister of Labor, Family and Social Issues Vlado Dimovski presented the Council with the goals of the EU’s Lisbon Strategy for employment, and the national employment strategy for 2004. He stated that the country will be thrown into a “battle for competitiveness” when it joins the EU later this year. Much work must be done in the field of employment, the minister told the Council, since just 23.4 percent of people over 55 are currently employed. The European average is 38 percent, while the Lisbon Strategy foresees a rate of 50 percent by 2010.

Austrians first foreign investors in SLO media

Early this week, it was announced that the Austrian firm Styria Medien AG purchased a 19.5 percent share of the Dnevnik newspaper house from KD Holding on 16 January. This marks the first major foreign investment in an existing Slovene media enterprise. Neither Styria nor KD Holding revealed how much the Austrians paid for the shares.

Styria Medien AG has recently taken a strong interest in the Slovene media scene. At the end of last year, it began publishing a free weekly newspaper, Žurnal, and put up capital for Marko Crnkovič’s new daily which is to debut in March. They are reportedly looking at two other projects within the Slovene media.

Styria Medien has already contacted the Ministry of Culture for permission to purchase KD Holding’s final six-percent share of Dnevnik. Nevertheless, the Slovene firm DZS still holds a majority of shares in Dnevnik, 51 percent.

Delo regional daily plan appears dead

Finance reported on 25 January that Gorenjski glas publisher, the Gorenjski Glas Society, is planning to turn the paper into a daily. Currently, it appears twice per week, on Tuesdays and Fridays. The move to a daily format will take place gradually, beginning this spring. A full business plan detailing the steps to be taken is expected to be completed by the end of the month.

Gorenjski glas is primarily read and distributed in the Gorenjska region, with the largest readership figures coming from Kranj and Škofja Loka.

This follows last November’s announcement by Primorske novice director Barbara Verdnik that her paper is also planning move to a daily format in 2004. Currently, the newspaper publishes on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturday, but this year they hope to move to a 6-day per week schedule.

The announcements come as major blows to Delo, which has assembled a consortium of regional newspapers to pool resources to allow all involved to go to a daily print schedule. Both Gorenjski glas and Primorske novice are part of that consortium, which also included Novi Tednik (Celje), Dolejnski list and Tednik (Ptuj) at the start. Dolenjski list soon dropped out, and Murska Sobota’s Vestnik jumped on board in its place.

Delo announced its plan in January 2002, and twelve months later, the regionals began publishing a joint insert called “TV Okno” (TV Window). The supplement’s primary feature is the week’s television listings, but it also includes original content. It is included in each of the regionals’ Thursday issue. The editorial board which produces Delo’s "Vikend Magazin" supplement produces the television schedule portion of, while the regionals prepared three of the 48 pages themselves.

Last April, the regionals and Delo formed an economic interest association called Skupni List, with the intention of making their collaboration more formal. Little else was done last year towards the execution of the plan.

While Verdnik told Finance that Primorske novice’s plans do not mean that the paper will not continue to participate in joint projects with other regional newspapers, Gorenjski glas’s director Marija Volčak said no such thing. She essentially told Finance that the project is dead, saying that “I think that because Delo showed too little flexibility towards the conditions in the Slovene regions, which are very different, and insisted that all of the regional newspapers went daily at the same time.”

If its plans succeed, the number of daily newspapers in Slovenia could soon double. Currently there are six, with Delo, Večer, Dnevnik and Ekipa having started publication before independence, and just to – Slovenske novice and Finance – launching after 1991. Three more failed dismally: Slovenec printed from 1991 to 1996, Republika from 1992 to 1996 and Jutranjik for only the month of June 1998. Aside from Gorenjski glas and Primorske novice, Marko Crnkovic’s is launching a new daily called Ekspres in March, and Dnevnik and Salomonv oglasnik have announced they are working on a daily called Jasno, but it is unclear when and if it will premier.

Radio Marš returns!

At noon on Friday, 23 January, Maribor Radio Študent (Marš) returned to the airwaves after a break of nearly two years. The station is broadcasting on the 95.9 MHz frequency in Maribor and its surroundings, the same one it held from 1990 until late 2001.

In November 2001, a decision sent down by the High Court in Maribor erased Radio Marš from the legal registry. Authorities tried to shut down the station several times after allegations that it was improperly privatized by employees in 1994.

The University of Maribor, one of the original legal founders of the station, led the charge for its elimination. A spokesman for Maribor University told the daily Delo at the time that the university did not sue to have Marš shut down, but the university had to protect its interests. Maribor University maintained that the station had nothing to do with Maribor students, and in any case was run by people who did not study at the university and who were too old to be students.

After Marš went off the air in March 2002, Maribor’s Radio Center (103.7 MHz) began carrying Radio Marš programming on Thursdays as a show of solidarity. Radio Marš staff organized as the Society for the Support of Marš, together with the Student Organization of the University of Maribor (ŠOUM) formed a new legal entity, Marš Institute, shortly thereafter and have worked ever since to bring the station back. In January 2003, Marš restarted its work as part of the cable network SV Slovenija and over the internet, where it will continue to broadcast as well.

And in other news…

• According to data discussed at the third Conference on Internet Usage for Business in Portorož on Wednesday, Slovenes lag behind the European average internet usage by about two years. However, nearly 90 percent of offices in the country have computers with internet access. The data came from a research project conducted by Ljubljana University’s Faculty of Management, with the assistance of 750 Slovene businesses. The conference, organized by the firm GV Izobraževanje, ran through Friday.
  
  

• Early in the week, investigators discovered a laboratory producing the drug ecstasy in a private apartment in Portorož. Police confiscated the drug-making materials, and believe that ecstasy has been made in the apartment since the beginning of 2003.

• On 22 January, Galerija MGLC in Ljubljana hosted a symposium on the history of the alternative press in Slovenia. The event was organized as a side-event to the exhibit “Point d’Ironie” at the gallery, which deals with media products. The symposium was made up of three parts: theory and technology, history and current projects.

• A new trilingual monthly magazine called Ljubljana Calling recently appeared in the capital. Published in Slovene, English and German, the magazine is aimed sharply at tourists. It is published in the first week of each month, with a print run of 9000 copies. Ljubljana Calling is run by Inqua, and a .pdf file of the pilot issue can be found here: http://www.ljubljana-calling.com.

• At the end of February, Slovene television journalists are to join forces with their colleagues to the south in forming an international network, Balkan News Network (BNN) The network expects to launch a 24 hour service with a potential viewing audience of some 65 million. Programs will air in the journalists’ native language with English subtitles. Journalists from Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro (including Kosovo) and Turkey in addition to Slovenia are all expected to participate. The initiative is being spearheaded by the Serbian firm Braća Karić.