Slovenia’s government under its newly elected prime minister, Janez Janša, “will almost certainly reverse sanctions on Israeli officials,” a top Israeli official told JNS on Sunday, but may not go as far as to shield the Jewish state from punitive E.U. measures, he added.
The official, who expressed his personal opinion under condition of anonymity, said that Janša “may need to pick his battles” on foreign policy, and “may need to preserve his political capital for the Russia-Ukraine war, which is much more important to Slovenians than what happens in and around Israel.”
Former Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob of the left-wing Freedom Movement was among the most hostile to Israel in the European Union. His government imposed a ban on importing goods made by Israelis from Judea and Samaria, endorsed South Africa’s disputed genocide lawsuit against Israel and the International Court of Justice, and said it would comply with the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In the May 10 election, Janša’s Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) obtained the second-highest number of votes, trailing the Freedom Movement by a narrow margin. Janša became prime minister thanks to a coalition of right-wing movements. It’s supported externally by the Resni.ca Party, which opposes the E.U.’s supply of weapons to Ukraine and has been accused of being pro-Russian, though its leaders deny this. Janša is an outspoken supporter of Ukraine and the E.U. military support of the Ukrainian war effort.
“Finding a middle ground for the coalition partners on Russia and Ukraine is going to be challenging enough for Janša even without starting a war with the anti-Israel bureaucracy in the foreign ministry,” the Israeli official predicted.
Janša has the political know-how to pull it off, the official noted, as this is his fourth term as prime minister—a position he previously held from 2004 to 2008, from 2012 to 2013 and from 2020 to 2022. But the political tightrope act “may leave little bandwidth for spectacular foreign policy moves. So we need to temper our expectations—Janša is probably not going to be the new Viktor Orban, at least not right away,” the official added.
Orban, Hungary’s former prime minister, thwarted several anti-Israel moves by the European Union, which requires a consensus of the bloc’s 27 member states for some actions. Orban’s Fidesz Party lost the election last month, and he was replaced by Peter Magyar, a politician who’s vowed to mend the fences with Brussels.
“Not only is Janša not in the same position internally as Orban was, but Slovenia is a tiny nation of 2 million people, with hardly any leverage on larger member states,” the Israeli official noted.
Janša, who has expressed his admiration for U.S. President Donald Trump, has said he supported moving the Slovenian embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and opposed the recognition by Slovenia of Palestinian statehood in 2024. But “it remains doubtful he’ll have the bandwidth to undo this,” the official said.
Slovenia, which split off from the former Yugoslavia in 1991, has a “polarized political legacy” owing to the Balkan wars and decades of communist rule, the official said.
“You have a strong Socialist tradition, which adopted modern left-wing liberal causes and parlance, but you also have a strong anti-Socialist sentiment, with bitter memories of Soviet domination, and concern about the E.U. Right now, the right-wing is back but it oscillates,” the Israeli official said.
