The European Council has a new, old problem: populist Janez Janša is back as prime minister, driving Slovenia further to the right and potentially becoming a new headache for Brussels.
Despite narrowly losing the March parliamentary elections to the liberal party, Janša’s Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) managed to sign a coalition agreement with several centre-right groups in order to form a new government, securing his fourth term on 22 May.
He previously held office as PM from 2004 to 2008, again from 2012 to 2013 and yet again from 2020 to 2022.
And he has always been quite a controversial figure, with a CV featuring two spells in prison – in 1988 for exposing military secrets as a journalist (which was actually seen as a brave move) and in 2014 for a corruption conviction (that was later overturned).
As a close ally of former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, ex-Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki and America’s Donald Trump, he is known for his combative governing style in which free media, independent courts, and Brussels bureaucrats are all seen as enemies.
