European Politics Behind Closed Doors: The Origins of Euroscepticism in Slovenia
European Politics Behind Closed Doors: The Origins of Euroscepticism in Slovenia

Summary/Abstract: Euroscepticism is a common political problem in many EU member states as well as potential candidates. There is a general belief that the EU is a giant bureaucratic organization far removed from peoples’ actual needs and everyday problems and therefore not to be trusted. Such ambivalent sentiment towards the EU could also be noticed in Slovenia after it gained independence from Yugoslavia and started the EU accession process. General public opinion was rather low – people were generally sympathetic but never completely enthusiastic about the EU. What attributed to this attitude was the fact that politicians adopted several regulations without properly informing the public, therefore leaving people with little or no knowledge concerning potentially important issues. In this paper, we argue that the threat to representative democracy is not so much about politicians not keeping their promises but rather about politicians not telling their constituents what they are working on and doing even more than promised by adopting more regulations than those communicated to the public. Our analysis of election manifestos, public opinion and press releases uncovers two fundamental problems of the Slovenian government between 2000 and 2004. The first is an almost routine adoption of EU regulations without serious public debate and the second government’s consistent failure to communicate relevant matters and therefore bring them closer to the electorate. Although the analysis focuses on events that happened 20 years ago, we believe that our findings are highly relevant for the state of Slovenian politics today.

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