The EU Commission travels every six months. The country that will take over the presidency for the next six months will be visited. A ceremony, usually. The visit to Ljubljana on Thursday, the first day of the Slovenian Council Presidency, was different.
Frans Timmermans, the Deputy President of the EU Commission, refused to take the traditional family photo in protest. The host had given him the reason for this. Slovenia’s Prime Minister Janez Jansa had previously questioned the independence of two judges in a working meeting with the Commission and showed a photo of them together with social democratic politicians and MEPs. The heads of the judges in the picture had been circled with colored pencil.
Frans Timmermans
Bild: WHAT/AFP
Timmermans, a social democrat from the Netherlands, justified his photo boycott against the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, saying that he did not want to stand on a podium with someone who “attacked and defamed mandataries and judges in an unacceptable manner”.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is said to have pointed out to Jansa at the meeting that judges should also have a biography and political opinion. At a joint press conference with Jansa, the head of the commission then addressed the issue of the rule of law in detail, which observers interpreted as a warning to right-wing national government leaders on the open stage.
Trust the most valuable asset
Trust is the most valuable asset in the EU, she said. This also includes trust in an independent judicial system and free media. She demanded that Slovenia send representatives to the new EU public prosecutor: “Slovenia has to deliver.”
Jansa repeatedly attacks the judiciary and the media. Jansa blocked the sending of two Slovenian prosecutors to the new EU public prosecutor’s office because they were investigating politicians in his camp. The Minister of Justice then resigned. That didn’t change the fact that the EU public prosecutor’s office had to start without Slovenian members. The state news agency STA, in turn, withholds Jansa funds to which she is entitled by law.
After the uproar during the Commission’s visit, there was renewed excitement yesterday. This time it was a statement from Slovenia’s Interior Minister Ales Hojs. He told journalists in Brdo that, according to what he “learned the day before,” he might call a “certain high-ranking person in the EU bureaucracy” a “pig” in the future. In a tweet subsequently published, he rejected assumptions that he could have meant Timmermans by this. (via)
