President Pahor receives the Alcide De Gasperi international award for achievements in building Europe

This afternoon, the President of the Republic of Slovenia, Borut Pahor, attended a ceremony in Trento, Italy, at which he received the "Alcide De Gasperi: Builders of Europe" award, which is conferred by the Government of the Autonomous Province of Trento for achievements in building Europe. In addition to the symbolic recognition, the award recipient also receives a EUR 25,000 prize.


Photo: Daniel Novakovič/STA

The award is named after an Italian statesman, visionary and former Prime Minister, Alcide De Gasperi, who, together with Jean Monnet of France, Robert Schuman of Luxembourg and Konrad Adenauer of Germany, is considered one of the founding fathers of the present-day European Union. By accepting the Alcide De Gasperi Award, President Pahor joined eight other builders of Europe, i.e. Helmut Kohl, Romano Prodi, Felipe González, Václav Havel, Simone Jacob Veil, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Sofia Corradi and Mario Draghi.

President Pahor received the award for his efforts in the common European project. His understanding of the significance of reconciliation between nations and people holds a special place. President Pahor understands reconciliation as the basis of the European project and has highlighted several times that the European Union could not have existed without the reconciliation between the opposing military forces in both world wars, and without reconciliation between neighbours. Throughout his political career, he dedicated central attention to this issue, not only during his two terms as the President of the Republic.

His efforts to attain reconciliation and understanding between people, nations and countries in the Western Balkans go back one and a half decades and he formalised them in the Brdo-Brijuni Process initiative during the time when he was the Prime Minister. President Pahor is one of the European leaders who particularly underline the importance of a united and strong European Union and advocate for its further deepening and a common European future.

The two highlights of his efforts took place on the international stage in 2020, i.e. the return of the National Hall in Trieste to Slovenians and a handshake with the Italian President Mattarella at the memorial dedicated to the victims of fascism and the victims of revolutionary violence after the Second World War in Basovizza, and the attendance at the ceremony on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Carinthian plebiscite in Klagenfurt with the Federal President of the Republic of Austria, Alexander Van der Bellen.


Photo: Daniel Novakovič/STA

Speech by President Pahor in English (Spoken word applies.):

At the end of the winter of 2020, the world was shocked by footage from Italy, from Bergamo, of how military vehicles were being used to transport people who had died from Covid-19. Like everyone else, we in Slovenia we deeply shaken. At the beginning of April, I decided to call the Italian president and my friend Matarella to express my condolences in person and to assure our full solidarity.

This was a time when, under normal circumstances, both countries would have been very actively fighting their way through a series of political, legal and bureaucratic problems, so that finally, in mid-July of this year, the return of the National Hall to Slovenes in Italy would take place, which had finally been agreed the year before.

Before calling President Matarella in Rome, I told my colleagues that they must protect me at all costs from the temptation to ask him how these procedures were progressing and whether they would be completed on time. This seemed to me to be an impolite, even immoral question in that crisis situation.

When we were coming to the end of a long conversation about the situation with Covid and possible Slovenian assistance, I addressed a few more kind words to him and wanted to say goodbye. And he said: "There is something else. Things are moving well regarding the National Hall. He referred to the National Hall by its Slovenian name. At first, I didn't know how to react to this, but then I showed restrained enthusiasm. When the conversation ended and it indicated that even Covid would not be an obstacle to the implementation of the complicated plan for the return of the National Hall, I was overwhelmed by strong emotions.

Weeks later, we had a special interview about it. I admitted at the outset my astonishment that in those difficult conditions for Italy, he had mustered the strength to keep his word regarding the promised return of the National Hall. Matarella surprised me again by saying: "My dear friend, the just return of the National Hall is not only important for Slovenians, it is equally important for Italians. The righting of wrongs and reconciliation must bring about mutual feelings of satisfaction."

These words made a great impression on me. When the final preparations began at the beginning of June, a good month before the hundredth anniversary of the fascist burning of the National Hall and its return, I communicated through a personal emissary to the President and my friend Matarella my willingness to pay tribute on that day to the memory of the Italians killed after the war by the Yugoslav authorities, as long as he was ready to bow to the memory of the four Slovenian heroes, the first victims of fascism in Europe. For both of us, this would be a demanding and complex gesture, which we knew would also encounter fierce opposition on both sides of the border.

It was not necessary for me to make this proposal, although his tribute in front of the monument to the four heroes of Bazovica would have been something revolutionary and unprecedented in history. But his words of two months earlier echoed in my mind, that "righting wrongs and reconciliation must bring about mutual feelings of satisfaction." Last but not least, on that day in Trieste, the Italian state returned the National Hall to the Slovenes. It was a fair and just act, but some circles in Trieste and Italy might have seen it as a defeat for their country and a victory for mine. I didn't want that.

In the joint report of the Slovene-Italian historical commission, which was prepared at the beginning of this millennium, experts from both sides of the border came naturally to an unequivocal assessment of the initial guilt of fascism for the pogrom against the Slovenes, and an attentive reader who wanted to hear the whole truth could also see a clear conclusion that the post-war Yugoslavian authorities prevailed in their zone over the Italians who did not agree with the new Yugoslav authorities. Thus, before and during the Second World War and after it, a lot of bad things happened between Slovenians and Italians, which fuelled serious disputes and resentments for many decades.

When the president and my friend Matarella has considered all this, he decided to accept my initiative. After some time, when the Slovenian and Italian public found out about it, there was a lot of enthusiasm, which was overshadowed here and there by strong annoyance and rejection.

But despite all this, we remained faithful to the idea of the plan that on that day, 13 July 2020, after a hundred years, the National Hall would be returned to the Slovenes, and before that we would pay our respects to both monuments with military honours in Bazovica near Trieste.

On that beautiful summer’s Monday, when I drove from Ljubljana to the meeting in Italy, I was met by hundreds of angry demonstrators who were protesting this tribute. I did not blame them; I tried to understand the power of emotions and prejudices.

Finally, I arrived to meet Matarella, who was waiting for me to inspect guard of honour of the Italian armed forces. The resounding playing of both hymns left a strong impression at that moment. We were on the verge of something important.

Just before we went to visit the two monuments, President Matarella invited me into a small room. We sat down, and he looked at me very intently and asked, "Dear Borut, do you remember how German Chancellor Kohl and French President Mitterand held hands at the German reunification ceremony at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin?"
"Yes", I answered before he had finished asking me.

"How would you view the two of us holding hands in front of the monuments?” he asked me curiously.

Before he could finish the question again, I said yes.

Then we both said something along the lines of: When things are difficult, but you overcome them with the strength of your heart and honest intentions, it is easier if you hold the hand of someone who feels the same way.

When we arrived in front of the two monuments, we did what we had agreed. The visitors watched this scene in amazement from a distance. Even the two guards flinched. A low cry was heard in the silence. Then, on that summer’s day, in front of the two monuments to suffering, we held hands; we didn't say anything, but we said everything.

In that handshake, all my human and political aspirations were symbolically summed up in a short but unrepeatable moment in history: coexistence, reconciliation and a common European future. Even the previously dubious public were taken aback by this act. Despite this, they could hardly have guessed how many years of our work, how many diplomats, officials, local and regional officials, and especially how many generations of democratically oriented Slovenians and Italians had made this whole wonderful story possible.

If I had to choose the most perfect moment of my entire career, this handshake would be one of them.

Things like this don't happen overnight. I have worked and lived my whole life for this moment.

In autumn of the same year, I somehow relived it in Klagenfurt. The Austrian president and my friend Van der Belln and I boldly decided that the centenary of the Carinthian plebiscite would be celebrated by both nations and countries together. That hadn't happened in a hundred years. The occasion of the hundredth anniversary was the first time and it was wonderful. No one will ever forget Alexander Van der Belln's emotional speech in the provincial palace in Klagenfurt, where he apologised in Slovenian for the delays in enforcing the minority rights of Slovenes. Both events, in Trieste and in Klagenfurt, left strong traces of solid coexistence between our nations. There can be no greater satisfaction.

As a child and young man, I was raised in a multicultural atmosphere. My mother's house is a kilometre from the Italian border. The Videm Agreement allowed us to move quite freely despite the border between communism and democracy. Thus, through an intimate life experience as a young man, I felt the mighty European idea.

Since then, my faith in it has never left me; it has taken over me even more. When I participated in the Slovenian political spring as a young intellectual and was elected to the first democratic parliament in the first multi-party elections, I always passionately connected democracy and Europe.

Soon after that, I was drawn to the question of the Slovenian national split during and after the Second World War. Communist propaganda misused the wonderful and inspiring liberation partisan resistance to cover up the Communist takeover of power during and after the war. This produced a civil war in the most terrible time of Slovenian history.

As a young politician, it seemed to me that many questions remained unanswered in this regard, and that this feeds hostile prejudices.

That's why I started trying to reconcile very early on. As president of the Social Democrats and later as prime minister, I had the opportunity to actually do something about it. To a large extent, this was also successful. The findings of the remains of the victims of the post-war massacres gave me and all of democratic Slovenian politics the task of investigating the matter, correcting injustices and symbolically strengthening the meaning of reconciliation.

Whenever we opponents threw logs under our feet in this regard, I referred to the importance of the reconciliation between Germany and France, which enabled the expansion of the European idea, a wonderful vision that was also championed by the Italian giant De Gasperi.

Such a political mentality, which sought its value background in European values, gave me the necessary strength, as prime minister, to start and complete negotiations on the unblocking of Croatia's accession negotiations for the European Union, as a result of which on 4 November 2009, Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor and I signed the Arbitration Agreement, which is the method of determining the border between the two countries, after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

This inspiring experience, that it is possible to resolve disputes peacefully, led my friend Kosor and I to the decision to found the informal political association that is the Brdo-Brijuni process. Even today, 13 years later, the presidents of countries from Slovenia to Albania participate in it, with the goal of including the countries of the Western Balkans in the European Union as soon as possible.

All these activities were part of the work of building a common Europe. In this sense, in 2017, together with prominent Slovenian intellectuals, I prepared and adopted the so-called Ljubljana Declaration, which is accompanied by the Draft of the new European Constitution.

I am convinced that sooner or later the moment will come when we European nations and countries will once again decide on even closer cooperation and strengthening of our European idea with a new European convention. The Russian Federation's aggression against sovereign Europe will, I think and hope, further accelerate these processes. Let us not forget that the European idea is first and foremost a peace project. The fact that the countries participating in it have not been at war for three quarters of a century says everything about it. Our general standard of living has also risen. This is the only way Europeans can intervene in global affairs.

There is no doubt that the European Union strengthens our material and spiritual well-being. It does not threaten small nations and countries. Quite the opposite. It also ensures that they strengthen their national identity and at the same time develop a common European one.

I am not even talking about the situation of national minorities in such a Europe. Only in such a Europe do we have a chance to flourish. An autonomous, sovereign one that is not limited to the narrow role of a bridge between two neighbouring countries. All this and more must be kept in mind when thinking about the future of our children. For them, I see no better alternative than a common European one. This is the best thing that has happened to us and will allow their dreams and talents to be fully realised.

I cannot think about their glorious future without remembering with respect and admiration De Gasperi and his colleagues.

But to be recognised in his name demands my humility, even though a great flame of joy and happiness burns in my heart.