Lucky is the country that is rarely in the
news! That certainly applies to the small former Yugoslav republic of Slovenia
in the Balkans.
Insofar as many people have lately heard of
it, it’s because Donald Trump’s wife Melania comes from there.
Even now, it’s
often confused with the central European nation of Slovakia.
Bordering Austria,
Croatia, Hungary, and Italy, the two million
people of Slovenia are almost all ethnic Slovenes who speak their native
Slovenian. Roman Catholicism constitutes the religion of 97 per cent of the
population.
Among the most homogeneous countries in
Europe, Slovenia largely escaped the brutalities that engulfed the breakup of
Yugoslavia, mainly because there were no large minorities within its borders
who wished to secede and join another of its former states.
That was not the case elsewhere, where many
Croats, Serbs, and Kosovar Albanians, suddenly found themselves stuck in new
countries they didn’t want to live in.
The Slovene lands were part of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire until the latter’s dissolution at the end of the First
World War. In 1918, the Slovenes joined the Serbs and Croats in forming a new
multinational state, which was named Yugoslavia in 1929.
After World War II, Slovenia became a
republic of the renewed, and Communist, Yugoslavia. As that country
disintegrated, the Slovenes succeeded in establishing their independence in
1991 after a short 10-day war.
Save for a territorial dispute with Croatia
over the waters of the Piran Gulf in the Adriatic Sea, Slovenia has no quarrels
with its neighbours. So, with few ethnic or religious issues, and given its
historical ties to Western Europe, Slovenia had no trouble joining both NATO
and the European Union in 2004.
In 2007 it also became the first former
Communist country to make the euro its currency, and in 2010 it joined the
OECD, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the global
association of high-income developed countries committed to democracy and
market economy.
Slovenia’s education system ranks as the
12th best in the world and 4th best in the EU, and significantly higher than
the OECD average. More than 85 per cent of adults have completed secondary
education and literacy is almost universal. In terms of health, life
expectancy at birth is almost 80 years.
A highly educated workforce and a
well-developed infrastructure makes for a vibrant economy. Per capita income in
Slovenia is US$31,007 in purchasing power parity, making it the second richest
of the Slavic countries, behind the Czech Republic.
A parliamentary republic, Slovenia’s
largely ceremonial president is directly elected by
absolute majority popular vote, in two rounds if needed, for a five-year term. Social
Democrat Borut Pahor was elected president with 67.4 per cent of the vote in
2012, defeating incumbent President Danilo Turk.
The bicameral
parliament consists of the 40-member National Council, primarily an advisory
body with limited legislative power, and the National Assembly, with 88 members
directly elected in single-seat
constituencies by proportional representation vote, and two directly elected in
special constituencies for Italian and Hungarian minorities by simple majority
vote, all for four-year terms.
The most recent
elections were held in 2014, with a new party, the Modern Centre, formed by
Miro Cerar, winning 34.6 per cent of the vote and 36 seats, followed by the Slovenian
Democratic Party with 20.7 per cent and 21 seats.
Cerar then assumed
the office of prime minister, heading a three-party coalition that includes the
Democratic Party of Pensioners and the Social Democrats.
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