Lecture "20 Years After the Independence: Experience of the Republic of Slovenia (and Why We are Still Optimists)"

Paris, 23.5.2011  |  speech

Lecture of the President of the Republic of Slovenia Dr. Danilo Türk at the French Institute for International Relations entitled "20 Years After the Independence: Experience of the Republic of Slovenia (and Why We are Still Optimists)"
Paris, 23 May 2011


(In French:) M. Thierry de Montbrial, Director-General,
Dear guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am very pleased to be able to present, on this occasion, my positions within this respected institution. The French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) is one of the most capable think tanks in the world and a research institute with its typical great intellectual discipline, which serves as the basis for profound discussions on the needs and political decisions of our time. With discussions that take place within the institute, new findings are discovered and initiatives for actual measures proposed.

The title of my contribution today is: "20 Years After the Independence: Experience of the Republic of Slovenia (and Why We are Still Optimists)".

The choice of this topic has been influenced by the anniversary of gaining our independence which we celebrate next month.

At the same time, this is a period when many questions about Slovenia's foreign policy emerge in general and in broader sense also about the European Union foreign policy, and about difficulties relating to globalization and global governance.


Slovenia twenty years ago

(In English:) In late 1980s two key ideas were driving Slovenia's bid for independence: identity and integration.

At the first glance they may have looked incompatible. However they were both necessary and made perfect sense in their combination. Eventually they both succeeded.

For every nation, identity has a core. For Slovenia that core is language and culture. This is expected in a nation which has never before enjoyed modern statehood or full political independence but which has had a very well developed linguistic and cultural profile. The Bible was translated into Slovene language as early as in 1584 and ever since language and culture carried a fundamental political role.

In the 1980s, identity was no longer limited to cultural and ethnic dimensions. In fact, two other aspects were even more important. One was human rights and the other was security. Yugoslavia was disintegrating, human rights violations were spreading and the awareness that they have to be protected was growing in Slovenia. At the end of 1980s, after Slobodan Milo¹eviæ's takeover in Serbia, it became clear that military conflict in Yugoslavia was a likely option. His threat of use of force in June 1989, at the mass rally at Kosovo polje, resounded strongly in Slovenia. Preservation of identity became a matter of ensuring the most basic security. Independent statehood and full sovereignty became the only realistic guarantee of both.

In those circumstances the process of independence went into a new phase. Slovenia amended its Constitution in 1989 and carried out its democratic elections in April 1990. At the plebiscite which took place at the end of the same year people overwhelmingly voted for independence. The Government was given six months to prepare everything for the proclamation of independence which happened on 25 June 1991.

Together with this drive for self-preservation and protection of the nation's identity Slovenia espoused a genuine desire for integration within the process led by the European Communities. Like others in Europe we perceived the European communities as the guarantee of peace, security, prosperity and human rights. We explained that our drive for independence was not motivated by selfishness or isolationism. Not everybody believed us, at least not at the beginning. There was plenty of misunderstanding and we were often accused of selfishness and "Garbo nationalism" (named after Greta Garbo, great actress, obsessed with seclusion but by no means unrespected - I personally didn't mind being told about the alleged Slovenian "Garbo nationalism"). However, we never tired of explaining our understanding that integration is necessary in contemporary Europe but that the question is how this is done. Military force is not a way towards integration - as Europe learned several times in its troubled history.

Pragmatism and principles of the European Communities appeared the right answer.


What did we learn in our first 20 years?

Integration is a journey not a one stop event. Slovenia has learned that quickly. The first stop on that journey was international recognition and membership in the UN. At the UN we learned a great deal about sovereign equality, the basic principle of the UN Charter (Aricle 2, para 1). We applied that principle carefully and wisely which helped Slovenia to be elected to the Security Council five years after its admission to the UN and to play a constructive role on the Council (1998 - 1999). Incidentally, this year Slovenia is again a candidate for the East European non permament seat in the “ Areopagus of the international security” .

We learned that sovereignty remains the basic concept of the international system. True, it is modified by the density of international obligations incumbent upon states and it is exercised in new and sophisticated ways. But it is still there and it continues to be useful. Small countries - members of the UN Security Council learn about their own opportunities as sovereign states. Being non-threatening, imaginative and ready to engage in reasonable experimentation brings diplomatic and political dividends. That was our experience too. We have carried that experience from the UN to other multilateral settins - the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the EU. In the first two decade Slovenia has presided over all these fora and has generally been successful in that role. Our understanding of the meaning of sovereignty and a reasonable approach to matters of cooperation and integration helped us greatly.

In the process of learning about sovereingty we had to resolve several issues not of our own choosing. The first among them how to deal with the issues of state succession. Here we insisted on the principle of full equality among successor states of former Yugoslavia and strictly rejected the notion that any of the successor states can have the privileged status of continuator of the former state which had ceased to exist. This approach succeeded in the year 2000 when Serbia/Montenegro applied for the UN membership as a new state. The practical benefits for all successor states became apparent in the agreement on succession concluded by the states of former Yugoslavia in 2001. The principle of equality of successor states will continue to be our basic principle in dealing with all the remaining issues of state succession.

Another basic lesson learned was the importance of good neighbourliness. It is a truism that geographically distant states have fewer bilateral problems and an easier path in handling their bilateral relations. Immediate neighbours, in particular new states have to settle sensitive issues such as borders, minorities and others. Slovenia has succeeded to establish excellent relations with all of its four immediate neighbours. This was done on the basis of mutual respect and confidence built over the years. Most recently, in 2010, we succeded, with the assistance of the European Commission, to agree on the arbitration to define the hitherto undefined sectors of our land and sea border with Croatia and the contact of Slovenia to the open sea. Another issue of good neighbouliness relates to the question of national minorities. The outstanding questions in this domain are dealt with in the spirit of respect for human rights and with the necessary patience.

Patience was, speaking generally, an important lesson we have learned in the past two decades. Patience was needed in the talks with the European Union and NATO, in the implementation of the acquis communautaire, and later, after our admission to the EU in 2004, in the preparations for entering the Schengen system and the Euro area in 2007. Looking at our experience in retrospect, the waiting periods looks much shorter now than they looked as we negotiated. The end results were not always what we expected initially but in the end we were satisfied.

Today we are puzzled to see the lackof patience and nerve in the EU, in particular in its western part, with such issues as imigration and North African reefugees. Slovenia would favour and expect a calmer, more considerate and more practical debate and policy making in this regard.


Slovenia today

Slovenia has been justly described as a succesful new state and a success story of the Central and Eastern Europe. In a year after independence we achieved macro-economic stability and experienced steady growth for almost two decades. Our GDP tripled. We opted for a gradualist approach and retained a high level of employment, social safety and cohesion. Slovenia is a parliamentary republic with a constitution which gurantees stabilty of coalition governments, which are the natural expression of our proportional electoral system. Our foreign policy has been pragmatic but also based on respect of international law. In short we tried our best, we have been fairly successful and we have always tried also to be good students.

However, the global financial and economic crisis produced several challenges. First, as a small export oriented economy, integrated in the Eurozone, Slovenia proved vulnerable to the sharp drop of demand at the international markets of goods in 2008-2009. Our GDP fell by more than 8%. Our recovery has been slow, although the forecasts for 20011- 2012 are more encouraging. We are expecting to grow above the EU average. According to the estimates of the European Commission, Slovenia's economy will grow by 1,9% this year and by 2,5% next year, while the Eurozone average is expected at the levels of 1,6% this year and 1,8% the next. This is encouraging but has to be seen against the background of the possible rise of inflation and the need to reduce our budget deficit (currently at the level of 5,8%) and the level of public debt at the level of 46% which is high by our standards.

Slovenia needs reforms. The pension reform has been enacted by law, raising the retirement age gradually to the level of 65 years, but it has to pass at the referendum which will take place on 5 June this year. We also need reforms in the areas of public, state owned enterprises and corporate governance, a higher level of direct foreign investments and higher levels of value added in our industries. We need to invest more in research and development, improve the technological level in our industries and, above all deal with unemployment, currently at the level of 8,2% and, in particular, provide opportunities for young, educated people. We have to retain our social cohesion which remains high but improve social partnership which failed in some of the recent situations, most noticeably with respect to the pension reform. Obviously, problems like these raise the political temperature and we have to handle our political and policy dialogue better.

Most of the tasks at hand belong to us and the political class of Slovenia is being put to a serious test.


Slovenia as part of the EU

Today, Slovenia is fully integrated in the EU. We share the pains and pleasure of others in the EU system. We have demonstrated solidarity and have joined the efforts to bail out those member states of the Union which urgently needed help. We know that the problem is far from resolved. Some big issues loom in the horizon. Probably, the future of Eurozone will require some form of restructuring through common Eurobonds and establishing a degree of fiscal union. But in order for that to become possible, more needs to be done to put the economies of Eurozone members in better shape.

Furthermore, Slovenia participates in the policy coordination in the procedure dubbed "the European semester". Recently, I have studied the papers our Government has presented to the EC for the year 2011. It is impressive to see how much effort has been invested in this process and how difficult it is to present the entire policy mix in a coherent fashion. The policies presented range from the short term tasks of securing budgetary discipline and consolidation of public finances to long term tasks such as reforms in the health sector and higher education.

In addition to the inherent complexity of the policy making at the national and the EU level one needs to bear in mind several additional issues which will have to be addressed. At present the main objectives of policy coordination are devoted to the tasks of financial stability. It is urgent to strengthen the dimension of growth and stimulation of growth. It is true that each EU member has to put its house in order first but soon there is a need to show the way forward. And for that we need growth and policies at the level of the Union which will credibly promise growth and development.

In the same spirit it will be necessary to establish a good balance between sanctions and rewards. At present the debate is largely concentrated on sanctions and their automaticity. These are sensitive issues and EU has to get its approach to them right.

And finally, the future policy coordination has to be made better known to the European public, to citizens of EU member states. Ideally it should also include a good degree of social dialogue with the trade unions, the business communities, NGOs etc. This is difficult given the different levels of social dialogue within states.

While the main attention in the EU today is given to financial issues, in particular the difficulties with our common currency, the Euro and economic policies and policy coordination, we, in Slovenia are concerned with the evolution of the common security and foreign policy as well.

The EU expected much from the new rules and institutions created under the Lisbon treaty. But the reality is that new institutions have to establish themselves in the harsh political reality of the global world. It would help if the European Council could agree - and stick to the agreement - on a limited number of key priorities for the future.

The first among them should be, in my opinion at least, EU policy towards the Eastern neighbourhood and EU's strategic partnership with Russia. EU's eastward expansion has been so far its greatest success and a source of considerable additional strength. Today the new members of the EU are dynamic economically and mostly fulfill the expectations. This has to continue.

The eastern direction should be EU's main direction of action. This applies also to future enlargement. Enlargement fatigue may be understandable but is clearly undesirable. It can only produce instability in the Balkans and resentment in Turkey.

Situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina should concern us greatly. One crisis has just been averted by personal engagement of HR Ashton, but we should not lose sight of the bigger picture. Bosnia is not functioning as a unified state should. If we agree that the Dayton remains the only game in town and Bosnia should be preserved as a unified state, then we must admit that the only way forward is for Bosnia to have a credible European perspective. Bosnians need to feel wanted in Europe. Slovenia proposed some months ago a pre-screening mechanism which would serve as a drive for necessary reform and joint effort of all Bosnians toward a clearly defined goal. This proposal was rejected by the Commission as something that does not fit with the existing rules. Well, Bosnia is not an ordinary potential candidate; it needs specific solutions, solutions which are out of the box. We cannot prevent a reasonable solution just because bureaucracy is loath to considering anything out of the box.

Turkey is a country of enormous potential. Its political and economic achievements in the past decade are formidable. Old fears that Turkish immigrants will overflow Europe have become irrelevant as Turkey's economy is displaying a much healthier and steadier growth than any other EU member state. We should have Turkey in, not against us.

The third priority should be Mediterranean and the North Africa. Here the EU will need a series of individualized approaches designed to assist each country in the Mediterranean southern rim in accordance with its needs. The multilateral frameworks of cooperation (Barcelona Process, Union for the Mediterranean) have failed. Partly because of the EU's approach which at times the southern partners perceived as patronizing, but mostly due to the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In order to redefine the EU role in that part of the world and make it more effective, it has to raise its profile in the international effort to solve the issue of Palestine, a key to stability in the Middle East. The basic ingredients of the two states solution are known. They were spelled out in policy statements by the EU, the Quartet and the UN. Most recently, President Obama emphasized the central importance of the borders of 1967. The critical task now is to move the peace process to the point of solution through a Conference of Peace in the Middle East. The challenge ahead is not primarily diplomatic, although a great deal of diplomacy and patience will be required. The key is political unity and courage of the main players, the members of the Quartet, and of the EU itself.


In conclusion: The nature of our optimism today

The preceding remarks have attempted to explain our view of the current EU environment as the principal area of action for its member states, including Slovenia.

So, which are the factors on which we base our guarded and modest optimism today:
First, Slovenia has been a successful state since its independance and is fully capable to deal with the challenges at hand;

Second, EU, our main framework for international cooperation and integration is based on a solid platform of shared values and norms, which should suffice for effective policy-making.

Third, the challenges facing the EU are clearly identified and with appropriate leadership can be properly addresse. This applies to the crisis of Euro, to the setting of priorities of EU's common and security policy and to questions of immigrations. None of these problems are insurmountable. Political wisdom and proper leadership can provide solutions to all.

And finally, the real problem of the world today is global governance. We still have some time to think. Reforms of the global institutions such as the UN and the IMF is needed but can still wait for a few years. Let us work for a coherent European Union now, so that we, the Europeans will be able to make a meaningful contribution to global change.