On 31 May and 1 June 2002, Slovenia played host to Central Europe’s leaders at the ninth Meeting of Presidents of Central European States. The presidents of Poland, Germany, Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Ukraine, Moldova, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovenia all attended.

This year’s theme was the role of Central Europe in an integrating Europe, the achievements of transition processes in Central European countries and the European future.

Protocol events took place at Bled’s Grand Hotel Toplice, while plenary sessions were held at Brdo pri Kranju. Extensive bilateral meetings were held back at Bled.

Controversies seemed to be consciously avoided. Asked whether he had discussed the Beneš decrees with Czech president Václav Havel, Austrian president Thomas Klestil simply said the two will meet in September. Globalization and trafficking in drugs and human beings were also touched upon, though it seems most topics were not discussed in much depth.

At the meeting, Slovak president Rudolf Schuster donated a remote-control de-mining machine worth some USD 190,000 as Slovakia's first donation to the fund.

But overall, the meeting had a markedly low-key tone, which flew in the face of expectations. Before start of the meeting, Ignac Golub, State Secretary at the Foreign Ministry, told Dnevnik that the meeting "fits into the designing of a comprehensive image of Slovenia as a place of international dialogue." Golub cited last year’s Bush-Putin summit as another major example of this.

But even that summit did not live up to expectations. As Finance pointed out, though the international media covered the Bush-Putin summit in depth, it had little to say about the host country. The visits made by Pope John Paul II and American president William Clinton were similarly disappointing, along with the 1997 Meeting of Presidents of Central European States held in Piran.

Pulling off the meeting was no easy matter. Preparations started as early as last year and were carried out by more than twenty state bodies and services and between 1500 and 2000 individuals.

Aside from the sixteen heads of state, about 200 people came as part of the official delegations. Almost 2000 police officers managed security. The government paid a private public relations agency, Gigo Design, to promote the event. The total cost of the preparations has yet to be released, but security alone cost SIT 430 million (about USD 1.7 million).

Around 200 foreign and 100 domestic journalists were accredited to cover the meeting, along with 15 press agencies, 24 television stations and 11 radio stations. For the sake of comparison, almost 1200 journalists were accredited to cover the Bush-Putin summit.

But as with previous high-profile events held in Slovenia, it seems the country did not resonate well in the foreign media. Fortunately, however, Slovenia has recently had two other opportunities to aggressively promote itself on the world stage at a much lower cost.

The Eurovision contest was just one weekend earlier, and the Slovene representatives, the drag-trio Sestre, certainly raised the country’s image among Europe’s pop-music fans. Though they only placed 14^th, they sat for more interviews than any of the other contestants and found fans across the continent.

Also, the Slovene national soccer team participated for the first time in the World Cup in Korea and Japan the weekend following the meeting. The World Cup is one of the most widely-watched sporting events in the world, and participation raised Slovenia’s profile significantly around the globe.