STA, 15 February 2019 - Slovenia's European Commissioner Violeta Bulc has invited European Parliament President Antonio Tajani to join her in paying respect to Slovenian victims of fascist and Nazi violence by visiting the former Nazi concentration camp Risiera in Trieste and the nearby village of Basovizza.

Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc issued the invitation in a letter after a Twitter exchange with Tajani in the wake of his recent contentious speech at a commemoration of Italian victims of WWII aftermath events.

While Tajani said "I'm ready" as the proposal was made by Bulc in the 11 February Twitter exchange in which the commissioner accused him of distorting historical facts, he has not yet responded to the letter.

All our stories about Facism in relations to Slovenia can be found here

Bulc is proposing they jointly lay wreaths at Risiera and at a memorial near the village of Basovizza to honour the deaths of three Slovenian and a Croatian anti-fascists at the hands of Italian soldiers in 1930. They are considered the first victims of fascism in Europe.

It was Basovizza where Tajani remembered the Italian victims of post-war executions and Italian exiles from the regions of Istria and Dalmatia last Sunday, calling out "Long live Trieste, long live the Italian Istria, long live the Italian Dalmatia" in the process. He has since apologised for these words.

In the letter, Bulc welcomes Tajani's willingness to accompany her and proposes that the gesture be made on "25 April to commemorate Italy's Liberation Day".

"In these challenging times for the EU it is more important than ever before to promote the EU as project for peace, solidarity and unity and as bringing prosperity to all our nations," Bulc wrote in the letter, which she also published on Twitter.

"History teaches us that aggressive nationalism can easily be misused for nationalistic conflicts and even fuel war. I believe that society is today ready to build its future on cooperation and respect for one another."

STA, 13 February 2019 - The statement European Parliament President Antonio Tajani made in Italy's Basovizza on Sunday can also be understood as territorial claims, so I reject it completely, President Borut Pahor said on Wednesday. Tajani has meanwhile apologised for the statement after meeting Slovenian and Croatian MEPs over the matter.

"I expect Tajani to fully distance himself from his words," Pahor said on the sidelines of his calling the elections to the European Parliament in Slovenia.

He expects Tajani to realise his words were wrong and distance himself from them, which should be done as soon as possible to calm down the debate they have sparked off.

Pahor referred to the statement "Long live Trieste, long live Italian Istria, long live Italian Dalmatia, long live Italian exiles" Tajani made at the commemoration of the remembrance day for the Italian foibe victims.

Related: Slovenian Officials Criticise Italian "Revisionism" Over Foibe Massacres

He believes that in politics this is not an unimportant matter but a major issue which justifiably worries those to whom it refers.

Pahor added that Europe, which is built on reconciliation and mutual respect, cannot turn a blind eye to such words.

This is not the first time that senior Italian officials expressed unacceptable stances and assessments, Pahor stressed.

"But it is the first time that this happened in the context of European politics, when the European idea of integration and cooperation is weak, when there are serious signs of its crisis, when such stances are increasingly worrying."

It is due to these circumstances that Pahor expects the European Parliament president to come up with an appropriate and clear response.

Tajani met the Slovenian and Croatian MEPs from the European People's Party (EPP) group today and apologised for Sunday's statements in Basovizza after the meeting.

Tajani sorry for any offense

"I sincerely regret and I apologise for using the words which may have offended your citizens and which have been understood as a kind of a territorial claim. I assure you that this was neither my intention nor position on the matter," he said in a statement.

Tajani added that he was referring to the Italian-speaking exiles from Istria and Dalmatia, their children and grandchildren, many of whom attended the ceremony in Basovizza.

He said that his political career offered much evidence of his friendship and respect of Croatia and Slovenia, and added that all forms of totalitarianism deserved resolute condemnation.

Slovenian MEPs Franc Bogovič (EPP/SLS) and Lojze Peterle (EPP/NSi) said after the meeting that they were satisfied with the apology.

The EPP meanwhile announced that Tajani would also send a letter in a similar vein to Slovenian Foreign Minister Miro Cerar, who wrote to the European Parliament president about the matter yesterday.

Pahor addressed a letter about the incident to Italian President Sergio Mattarella already on Monday.

STA, 12 February 2019 - The parliamentary Commission for Oversight of Intelligence and Security Services debated on Tuesday the national security implications of a lengthy dispute with Italy over radio signals travelling across the border, and ways to protect Slovenian radio stations.

The dispute goes back well over a decade and revolves around frequency interference of radio broadcast signals that cross the border.

Some Slovenian stations have been ordered to pay fines by Italian courts, which has led to recurring criticism in Slovenia, most recently in 2016.

Italy insists Slovenian radio stations' signal in the border area is too strong, while Slovenia has accused Italy of failing to honour international agreements which govern such cases.

Commission chair Matej Tonin said the MPs inquired with the government what it was doing to protect Slovenian radio stations from court decisions that he said were "inappropriate considering how these issues are regulated internationally."

He said Slovenian stations may decide to withdraw from the border area for fear of fines, which would mean that "Slovenian language and Slovenian culture would not be heard in this area," which could represent "a significant security threat" in the absence of action.

According to Tonin, some of the measures presented by the government included counter lawsuits against Italian radio stations for frequency interference in Slovenia, assignment of additional frequencies to Slovenian operators, and legal assistance in cases before Italian courts.

The debate came just two days after senior Italian officials caused uproar in Slovenia and Croatia with statements interpreted as attempts at historical revisionism.

Tonin said that the context made the debate "all the more heated and pertinent".

STA, 12 February 2019 - Slovenian MEPs belonging to the European People's Party (EPP) share the concerns over Sunday's WWII aftermath statements by European Parliament President Antonio Tajani, but all except New Slovenia's (NSi) Lojze Peterle accepted the Italian's apology. Foreign Minister Miro Cerar will meanwhile ask Tajani for additional explanations.

Related: Slovenian Officials Criticise Italian "Revisionism" Over Foibe Massacres

Democrats (SDS) MEPs Patricija Šulin, Romana Tomc in Milan Zver wrote they accepted Tajani's explanation that his statements at the ceremony commemorating ethnic Italians killed by Yugoslav Partisans after WWII should definitely not be understood as nationalistic.

Commenting on Tajani's call "Long live Trieste, long live the Italian Istria, long live the Italian Dalmatia", the trio referenced the response of SDS leader Janez Janša, who said that Istria is Italian to the same extent as the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region is Slovenian.

Focusing on the part of Tajani's statement that undermined Slovenia's and Croatia's territorial integrity, Tomc added for the STA that "such reckless statements introduce unnecessary disquiet, especially since this chapter of history between Italy and Slovenia is closed".

While Tajani said in his apology that he had merely wanted to convey a message of peace, Tomc expects additional explanations and an open conversation also at the level of the EPP.

Related: President Pahor & Speaker Židan Express Concern After Neo-Fascist Rally in Trieste (Video)

At the same time she condemned what she labelled "a very populist reaction" to Tajani's speech.

Franc Bogovič of the Slovenian People's Party (SLS) also said phrases like Italian Istria and Dalmatia were completely unacceptable, with the memory still being alive of the horrors of the Fascist regime in occupied territories in Slovenia and Croatia after WWI.

Bogovič, however, also accepted Tajani's apology, leaving Peterle, Slovenia's first prime minister, as the only one to reject it.

"Neither his speech nor his half-hearted apology can be seen as contributing to peace," Peterle wrote, arguing Tajani did not apologise for his words but for their interpretation.

The NSi joined calls for Tajani's resignation.

Cerar is also disappointed

Meanwhile, also unhappy with Tajani's apology is Slovenian Foreign Minister Miro Cerar, who wrote to Tajani to remind him that European institutions and the European Parliament president had the duty to protect European values and not encourage this type of discourse.

Cerar, who is the head of the ALDE-affiliated Modern Centre Party (SMC), said the apology fell short of what he and Slovenia expect and that "it is fair that this matter be clarified fully".

"While every apology is welcome, it needs to be very clear that it involves the recognition of a mistake and the pledge the mistake will not repeat," Cerar said.

In the letter, Cerar said Tajani's statements had not reflected the spirit of the EU or its founding values.

"On the contrary, your statements are taking us back to times when dangerous rhetoric was used in Europe to encourage hatred towards other nations and create tensions."

"Many of us understood your statements as a threat, which is why we expect a sincere apology. The explanation regarding the alleged misinterpretation of you statements unfortunately does not suffice, since the statements run contrary to the basic principles of European order as laid down in the Helsinki Final Act on security and cooperation in Europe," Cerar wrote.

Cerar expects the leaders of European institutions to clearly say no to revisionism, to incitement of intolerance and hatred among nations.

"The tragic events of our shared history should not be the subject of political reinterpretations," the foreign minister added.

Cerar forwarded to Tajani a copy of a 2000 report by a bilateral commission of historians who examined Slovenian-Italian relations in the 1880-1956 period.

No apology from Salvini

While Tajani issued what has been described as a non-apology, Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has doubled down on statements he made at the ceremony and later on Twitter.

He said he did not understand the reaction of Slovenian Prime Minister Marjan Šarec, who spoke of "unparalleled revisionism" and wrote that "Fascism was a fact and its goal was to destroy the Slovenian nation".

"I don't believe that a child killed by the hands of a Nazi is any different than a child killed by the hands of a communist," Salvini said on Monday evening for an Italian TV report.

STA, 30 January 2019 - Agriculture Minister Aleksandra Pivec has backed efforts by winegrowers from the Slovenian region of Brda to protect the Rebula wine together with fellow Italian winemakers across the border.

The Rebula vine is grown on some 25% of all vineyards in Brda, a region near the city of Nova Gorica on the border with Italy.

The Rebula wine is thus synonymous with Brda and is also grown on the Italian side of the hilly Brda.

What bothers the Slovenian farmers is that Italian winegrowers from the Padua Valley also grow this vine.

But due to a different climate, the same vine produces a different wine taste, wine company Klet Brda director Silvan Peršolja explained on Wednesday.

Growing Rebula in Brda is much harder than in the valley, where it is planted in sand as opposed to a marl-rich soil on the hills of Brda and in the Vipava Valley in Slovenia.

"We also kept Rebula when Chardonnays, various Pinots and other varieties of wine dominated the market," said Peršolja.

Now that Rebula is gaining ground globally, there are some who have never known Rebula in their entire lives who would like to take advantage of it, he said.

"The Rebula from low-lying areas does not reach the quality of the Rebula from Brda, what they have in common is only the name," said Igor Simčič, one of the leading winegrowers from Brda.

The winegrowers from Slovenia's Brda thus launched a debate with their colleagues from the Italian side of Brda to protect Rebula at the international level a few years ago.

However, protection procedures are rather long and it could already be too late in a few years' time, so prompt action should be taken, the farmers told Pivec.

The minister pledged her support for their efforts to join forces with the winegrowers from the Italian side of Brda.

She visited Brda to discuss various challenges faced by the local winegrowers and other farmers, including more efficient drawing of EU funds, where the farmers highlighted red tape as the biggest problem.

STA, 17 January 2019 - Members of the Slovenian community in Italy will be protesting against a neo-fascist rally planned in the border town of Gorizia on Saturday. The Slovene Union Party (SSk) has called on its members and like-minded people to take part in an antifascist rally planned for the same day.

The antifascists say it is inappropriate for the Gorizia city authorities to receive the fascist rally participants, X Mas and Casa Pound, which is what happened at a similar rally last year.

Related: President Pahor and Speaker Židan express concern after neo-fascist rally in Trieste (video)

 "Gorizia must not accept such a decision and such behaviour because the fascist regime and terror between the two wars and during World War II caused great hardship," the SSk said in a press release on Thursday.

"The wounds caused by the fascist regime to the Gorizia locals can still be seen today and it is high time that they heal at last."

This year, Gorizia Mayor Rodolfo Ziberna decided against receiving the fascist rally participants after this move caused an outcry in 2018.

Klemen Milavčič, the new mayor of the nearby Nova Gorica, underlined in a press release today that "such provocations are dangerous and must not be underestimated".

He called on the neighbours of his town to act prudently, to the benefit of the whole area and with modern European values in mind.

Vice-president of the coalition Social Democrats (SD) Matjaž Nemec responded in a video on Twitter, saying that "it is our task to preserve European values: mutual respect, cooperation and building a new and modern European future".

The people of Gorizia and Nova Gorica have always fought for and built a future together, a future based on shared European values and are an inspiration for the entire Europe and the EU, said Nemec.

December 10, 2018

It has been reported last week that a Slovenian hunter killed a bear called Elisio, a collar-wearing subject of research at the University of Udine, Italy. The animal was shot in the area of Senožeče, Slovenia, and has in the past five years, while wearing the tracking collar, survived a collision with a train, completed several ascents over 2100 metres, swam across Cavazzo lake several times, and figured out how to safely cross a Slovenian highway.

The event stirred a lot of outrage on the Italian side of Elisio’s territory, while it continues to remain a minor story in Slovenia. One of the reasons might be in a conservation status of the Italian subspecies of the brown bear, that is the Apennine Brown Bear, which is marked at “critically endangered”. In contrast, the Slovenian government struggles to keep the number of ordinary European brown bears in check, with the conservation status marked as “least concern”, and bear salami being an ordinary offer at the Christmas stalls found in the central marketplace of Ljubljana. The important point here is that Elisio was an ordinary brown bear, not an endangered Apennine subspecies.

There are currently about 1,000 bears in Slovenia, and the Slovenian Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning ordered this number to be reduced by 200, 175 of which will be taken out by hunters before April 30, 2019 (Delo). This is also the reason why Italian researchers reported weekly on Elisio's whereabouts, hoping this would prevent him from getting shot. It did not.

Andrej Sila, from Sežana branch of the Slovenia Forest Service, expressed regret at the incident: “We are all very sorry that the hunter shot Elisio. We have permission to shoot five bears in our area due to population control. It happened as a consequence of a series of unfortunate events. The hunter shot the bear in the evening, when his collar wasn't visible.”. He also explained that weekly reports on the whereabouts of the bear cannot prevent these types of accidents, since bears tend to travel tens of kilometres a day.

This is not the first time Slovenian hunters killed a bear with an Italian research collar. In 2011 a Slovenian hunter shot a bear near Vrhnika, who then turned out to be an Italian media sensation called Dino. In the preceding year Dino managed to kill 14 donkeys in Northern Italy before the Slovenian hunter did not see his collar and shot him in a forest (source). Dino’s survival prospects, however, were dim even without the shooting, as his collar had grown deep into his flesh, causing an infection and starting to slowly suffocate the animal. When the hunter first saw him, Dino was hitting his head against a tree, presumably due to the pain. The collar, unlike the ones in use today, was not equipped with a “drop-off” system, which activates when the collar becomes too small and begins making it difficult for the animal to breath.

STA, 3 November 2018 - President Borut Pahor held up peace and the persistent building of democracy as ways of countering fascism as he responded to a far right manifestation in Trieste on Saturday.

"In the previous century, three totalitarianisms left behind a terrible trail of suffering, including fascism, which they plan on reviving at the rally in Trieste today."

"We can counter them by persistently building democracy, which facilitates the freedom of speech and the expression of different beliefs but not the freedom of hatred," he wrote in a message on Twitter.

He warned that peace and democracy may not be taken for granted and are not passed down genetically, they are handed down with actions.

"We have the right to freedom, but that freedom is circumscribed with the freedom of others. Let us therefore act tolerantly and build harmony, within and among nations," he said.

Predsednik Republike Slovenije Borut Pahor: pic.twitter.com/dCbBmOMN3H

— Borut Pahor (@BorutPahor) November 3, 2018

In a separate tweet, Pahor said that he would expound on this issue at a speech marking the centenary of the end of WWI he plans to deliver at Žale Cemetery on Friday.

His statements come in reaction to a rally by the extremist CasaPound group in Trieste, which ostensibly marks the centenary of the end of WWI but is seen as a show of force of a resurgent extreme right.

A counter-rally was staged today by anti-fascist groups.

Other Slovenian officials, including Prime Minister Marjan Šarec and Speaker Dejan Židan, have expressed concern about the far-right rally.

Related: Ethnic Slovenes in Italy Concerned about Neo-Fascist Rally in Trieste, Saturday (Videos)

STA, 3 November 2018 - Parliamentary Speaker Dejan Židan expressed concern ahead of a rally by Italian far right group CasaPound in Trieste, arguing that the rise of neo-fascism risked undermining good cross-border cooperation.

"Fascism needs to be resisted - with tolerance, cooperation and courage. We have to be harbingers of cooperation and reject practices that had caused so much evil in Slovenia and Europe," he said in a video message posted on Twitter.

He said he was "concerned to see neo-fascists rallying, concerned about the lack of condemnation of neo-fascism, not least because this is not a phenomenon confined to a single country."

Židan's statement came ahead of a rally in Trieste that it seen as a showcase of resurgent far-right extremism in the country. The rally was condemned yesterday by Prime Minister Marjan Šarec.

Slovenian officials have been urged to reach by the Slovenian minority in Italy, which fears that the sentiment, though ostensibly targeted at unchecked migration, may end up being channelled against members of the minority.

STA, 2 November 2018 - A neo-fascist rally scheduled to take place in Trieste, Italy on Saturday has raised concern in Slovenia, with fear being voiced in particular about the impact rising far-right sentiment will have on the Slovenian ethnic community living in the area.

Prime Minister Marjan Šarec described the rally by the far-right CasaPound as "salt on the never healed wounds of the Primorska Slovenians in the homeland and in the diaspora." "Fascism has always been evil incarnate, and it may not be supported!" he wrote on Twitter on Friday.

Tigr Primorske, an association dedicated to preserving the memory of a pre-WWII anti-fascist organisation called TIGR, has issued a call to President Borut Pahor to caution his Italian counterpart Sergio Mattarella about the possible instigation of hatred.

The Slovenian government, meanwhile, should let the Italian authorities and the EU know that the rally in Trieste "insults the emotions and the tradition of the resistance," thereby denying the very concept of post-war Europe, the organisation said in a press release on Friday.

The office of President Pahor said the president had already spoken up about some similar events in Italy, while also telling Mattarella during their last meeting that nationalist statements were being met with concern and opposition in Slovenia.

Mattarella will speak in Trieste on Sunday "and president Pahor expects that he will respond if needed," his office said.

Event celebrates “a crime and tragedy”

In a similar vein, the coalition Modern Centre Party (SMC) designated the scheduled rally as an event that should never happen because it celebrates an ideology that resulted in "crime and tragedy in the previous century."

"The centenary of the end of WWI should serve as an appeal to peace, coexistence and compassion, not as a reason for renewed glorification of chilling and dangerous ideas," the party said.

The appeals come in response to the rally by CasaPound, a far-right neo-fascist movement that has been gaining momentum in north Italy.

The local authorities have not banned the rally despite numerous appeals to do so, but they restricted the path of the march so that it does not come close to some of the landmarks that are significant for the Slovenian ethnic community, including the Narodni Dom and the monument to the Basovizza heroes.

Slovenian community warn of toxic atmosphere

The Slovenian community living in and around Trieste has recently warned that the atmosphere in Italy is so toxic it could not be ignored, with CasaPound by no means the only demonstration thereof.

The Slovenian Cultural and Economic Union (SKGZ), one of the minority's biggest organisations in Italy, said earlier this week it was no longer possible to look the other way.

To counter the CasaPound rally, several anti-fascist organisations have announced a counter-rally in Trieste that is expected to draw several thousand people. Many members of the Slovenian community in Trieste are expected to to attend the counter-protest.

STA, 18 October 2018 - The Human Rights Ombudsman has found that the Slovenian police, administrative units and courts did not breach regulations governing bilinguality, which apply in areas where the Hungarian and Italian minorities live. Still, Ombudsman Vlasta Nussdorfer said this did not mean irregularities were not taking place.