On May 1 ten years will have passed since Slovenia joined the European Union. Therefore we invited Aleksander Aristovnik, Professor at the Faculty of Administration, expert on European connections. He told us that the world economic crisis hurt the European Union more than it had been expected, and consequently the development level of the union is far below the expected. He admits that Slovenia was absolutely unprepared for the crisis, and the consequences can be felt still today.

"During good times we should have made a number of reforms, which we unfortunately didn't. We should have modelled ourselves on Germany, which introduced the necessary reforms in the first half of the past decade, and has left the crises behind long time ago," said the chat room guest.

And how to help the countries in crisis? "The countries should be helped by responsible politicians, by implementing the indispensable reforms without populism, while pointing out to the citizens the light at the end of the tunnel. Here this light can't be seen, only sacrifice is expected from everybody, and in the end everything gets worse. Here a crucial leap of thought should be made, and the most important role should be played by the politics," said Aristovnik.

What should the vision for economics of our country be based on? Aristovnik's answer is: "I believe that the crucial advantage Slovenia has are well educated and hardworking people, and we should take care with them. We should not carelessly let the best young people leave, go abroad. We should choose the areas where we can be competitive, e.g. pharmaceutical industry, thermal tourism, wood industry etc. We should write these guidelines into our strategic documents, which unfortunately we don't have yet."

The (lack of) drawing European funds is caused by lack of knowledge, and negligence
"EU is encouraging us to invest in the areas which will strengthen the Union as a whole in international competiveness," said Aristovnik, but warned that we should not forget about the »Brussels billions« which can play an important role in the economic development of Slovenia. The insufficient cohesion fund drawing is, according to Aristovnik, caused mainly by lack of knowledge, and negligence of the state administration, as every year the managing authority is replaced, including the key personnel participating.

We should find a way to bring the EU closer to citizens
We could not avoid the topic of the coming elections for the European parliament. As the voter turnout is traditionally rather low, we asked about the ways of increasing it. "In order to increase the voter turnout we should bring the EU closer to citizens, presenting both the advantages the connection brings, and introduce to them the parties they can vote for, as the parties at the European level differ from those at the national level," believes Aristovnik. He also said that the main question of the campaign would probably deal with better use of European funds, and how to reduce misuse. He expressed hope that the daily Slovenian politics would withdraw from the European campaign.

Brina Tomovič, MMC
Translated by G. K.