Jan 6 (Reuters) – Slovenia will hold parliamentary elections on March 22 after President Natasa Pirc-Musar signed a decree on Tuesday calling for a poll in the NATO and European Union member state, in what will likely be a closely-contested race.
“The decree… marks the start of an important period for democracy in which citizens will again decide on the future direction of our country,” Pirc-Musar said in a statement.
Since June 2022, Slovenia has been run by the centre-left coalition government of Prime Minister Robert Golob, comprising ministers from Golob’s Freedom Movement party, Social Democrats and the Left. Populist former premier Janez Jansa leading the SDS party has remained the bloc’s strongest opposition.
Pirc-Musar said that she wanted a new government to be formed quickly and that she would award the mandate “to the one who brings in 46 votes” in the 90-member parliament.
She also appealed to representatives of political parties and media to keep the pre-election rhetoric calm and focus on finding solutions to the challenges facing society rather than on divisions.
(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Alex Richardson, Alexandra Hudson)
Ron Curtis, an English professor in Montreal, lived for 40 years with a degenerative spinal disease, in what he called the “black hole” of chronic pain.
On a July day in 2022, Mr. Curtis, 64, ate a last bowl of vegetable soup made by his wife, Lori, and, with the help of a palliative care doctor, died in his bedroom overlooking a lake.
Aron Wade, a successful 54-year-old stage and television actor in Belgium, decided he could no longer tolerate life with the depression that haunted him for three decades.
Last year, after a panel of medical experts found he had “unbearable mental suffering,” a doctor came to his home and gave him medicine to stop his heart, with his partner and two best friends at his side.
Argemiro Ariza was in his early 80s when he began to lose function in his limbs, no longer able to care for his wife, who had dementia, in their home in Bogotá.
Doctors diagnosed A.L.S., and he told his daughter Olga that he wanted to die while he still had dignity. His children threw him a party with a mariachi band and lifted him from his wheelchair to dance. A few days later, he admitted himself to a hospital, and a doctor administered a drug that ended his life.
Until recently, each of these deaths would have been considered a murder. But a monumental change is underway around the world. From liberal European countries to conservative Latin American ones, a new way of thinking about death is starting to take hold.
Stephanie Nolen is exploring access, attitudes and approaches to medically assisted death around the world.
Over the past five years, the practice of allowing a physician to help severely ill patients end their lives with medication has been legalized in nine countries on three continents. Courts or legislatures, or both, are considering legalization in a half-dozen more, including South Korea and South Africa, as well as eight of the 31 American states where it remains prohibited.
It is a last frontier in the expansion of individual autonomy. More people are seeking to define the terms of their deaths in the same way they have other aspects of their lives, such as marriage and childbearing. This is true even in Latin America, where conservative institutions such as the Roman Catholic church are still powerful.
“We believe in the priority of our control over our bodies, and as a heterogeneous culture, we believe in choices: If your choice does not affect me, go ahead,” said Dr. Julieta Moreno Molina, a bioethicist who has advised Colombia’s Ministry of Health on its assisted dying regulations.
Yet, as assisted death gains more acceptance, there are major unresolved questions about who should be eligible. While most countries begin with assisted death for terminal illness, which has the most public support, this is often followed quickly by a push for wider access. With that push comes often bitter public debate.
Should someone with intractable depression be allowed an assisted death?
European countries and Colombia all permit people with irremediable suffering from conditions such as depression or schizophrenia to seek an assisted death. But in Canada, the issue has become contentious. Assisted death for people who do not have a reasonably foreseeable natural death was legalized in 2021, but the government has repeatedly excluded people with mental illness. Two of them are challenging the exclusion in court on the grounds that it violates their constitutional rights.
In public debate, supporters of the right to assisted death for these patients say that people who have lived with severe depression for years, and have tried a variety of therapies and medications, should be allowed to decide when they are no longer willing to keep pursuing treatments. Opponents, concerned that mental illness can involve a pathological wish to die, say it can be difficult to predict the potential effectiveness of treatments. And, they argue, people who struggle to get help from an overburdened public health service may simply give up and choose to die, though their conditions might have been improved.
Should a child with an incurable condition be able to choose assisted death?
The ability to consent is a core consideration in requesting assisted death. Only a handful of countries are willing to extend that right to minors. Even in the places that do, there are just a few assisted deaths for children each year, almost always children with cancer.
In Colombia and the Netherlands, children over 12 can request assisted death on their own. Parents can provide consent for children 11 and younger.
Denise de Ruijter took comfort in her Barbie dolls when she struggled to connect with people. She was diagnosed with autism and had episodes of depression and psychosis. As a teenager in a Dutch town, she craved the life her schoolmates had — nights out, boyfriends — but couldn’t manage it.
She attempted suicide several times before applying for an assisted death at 18. Evaluators required her to try three years of additional therapies before agreeing her suffering was unbearable. She died in 2021, with her family and Barbies nearby.
The issue is under renewed scrutiny in the Netherlands, where, over the past decade, a growing number of adolescents have applied for assisted death for relief from irremediable psychiatric suffering from conditions such as eating disorders and anxiety.
Most such applications by teens are either withdrawn by the patient, or rejected by assessors, but public concern over a few high-profile cases of teens who received assisted deaths prompted the country’s regulator to consider a moratorium on approvals for children applying on the basis of psychiatric suffering.
Should someone with dementia be allowed assisted death?
Many people dread the idea of losing their cognitive abilities and their autonomy, and hope to have an assisted death when they reach that point. But this is a more complex situation to regulate than for a person who can still make a clear request.
How can a person who is losing their mental capacity consent to dying? Most governments, and doctors, are too uncomfortable to permit it, even though the idea tends to be popular in countries with aging populations.
In Colombia, Spain, Ecuador and the Canadian province of Quebec, people who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or other kinds of cognitive decline can request assessment for an assisted death before they lose mental capacity, sign an advance request — and then have a physician end their life after they have lost the ability to consent themselves.
But that raises a separate, challenging, question: After people lose the capacity to request an assisted death, who should decide it’s time?
Their spouses? Their children? Their doctors? The government? Colombia entrusts families with this role. The Netherlands leaves it up to doctors — but many refuse to do it, unwilling to administer lethal drugs to a patient who can’t clearly articulate a rational wish to die.
Jan Grijpma was always clear with his daughter, Maria: When his mind went, he didn’t want to live any more. Maria worked with his longtime family doctor, in Amsterdam, to identify the point when Mr. Grijpma, 90 and living in a nursing home, was losing his ability to consent himself.
When it seemed close, in 2023, they booked the day, and he updated his day planner: Thursday, visit the vicar; Friday, bicycle with physiotherapy and get a haircut; Sunday, pancakes with Maria; Monday, euthanasia.
All of these questions are becoming part of the discussion as the right to control and plan one’s own death is pushed in front of reluctant legislatures and uneasy medical professionals.
Dr. Madeline Li, a Toronto psychiatrist, was given the task of developing the assisted-dying practice in one of Canada’s largest hospitals when the procedure was first decriminalized in 2015. She began with assessing patients for eligibility and then moved to providing medical assistance in dying, or MAID, as it is called in Canada. For some patients with terminal cancer, it felt like the best form of care she could offer, she said.
But then Canada’s eligibility criteria expanded, and Dr. Li found herself confronting a different kind of patient.
“To provide assisted dying to somebody dying of a condition who is not happy with how they’re going to die, I’m willing to assist them, and hasten that death,” she said. “I struggle more with people who aren’t dying and want MAID — I think then you’re assisting suicide. If you’re not dying — if I didn’t give you MAID, you wouldn’t otherwise die — then you’re a person who’s not unhappy with how you’re going to die. You’re unhappy with how you’re living.”
Who has broken the taboo?
For decades, Switzerland was the only country to permit assisted death; assisted suicide was legalized there in 1942. It took a further half century for a few more countries to loosen their laws. Now decriminalization of some form of assisted death has occurred across Europe.
But there has recently been a wave of legalization in Latin America, where Colombia was long an outlier, having allowed legal assisted dying since 2015.
Paola Roldán Espinosa had a thriving career in business in Ecuador, and a toddler, when she was diagnosed with A.L.S. in 2023. Her health soon deteriorated to the point that she needed a ventilator.
She wanted to die on her terms — and took the case to the country’s highest court. In February 2024, the court responded to her petition by decriminalizing assisted dying. Ms. Roldán, then 42, had the death she sought, with her family around her, a month later.
Ecuador has decriminalized assisted dying through constitutional court cases, and Peru’s Supreme Court has permitted individual exceptions to the law which prohibits the procedure, opening the door to expansion. Cuba’s national assembly legalized assisted dying in 2023, although no regulations on how the procedure will work are yet in place. In October, Uruguay’s parliament passed a long-debated law allowing assisted death for the terminally ill.
The first country in Asia to take steps toward legalization is South Korea, where a bill to decriminalize assisted death has been proposed at the National Assembly several times but has not come to a vote. At the same time, the Constitutional Court, which for years refused to hear cases on the subject, has agreed to adjudicate a petition from a disabled man with severe and chronic pain who seeks an assisted death.
Access in the United States remains limited: 11 jurisdictions (10 states plus the District of Columbia) allow assisted suicide or physician-assisted death, for patients who have a terminal diagnosis, and in some cases, only for patients who are already in hospice care. It will become legal in Delaware on Jan. 1, 2026.
In Slovenia, in 2024, 55 percent of the population who voted in a national referendum were in favor of legalizing assisted death, and parliament duly passed a law in July. But pushback from right-wing politicians then forced a new referendum, and in late November, 54 percent of those who voted rejected the legalization.
And in the United Kingdom, a bill to legalize assisted death for people with terminal illness has made its way slowly through parliament. It has faced fierce opposition from a coalition of more than 60 groups for people with disabilities, who argue they may face subtle coercion to end their lives rather than drain their families or the state of resources for their care.
Why now?
In many countries, decriminalization of assisted dying has followed the expansion of rights for personal choice in other areas, such as the removal of restrictions on same-sex marriage, abortion and sometimes drug use.
“I would expect it to be on the agenda in every liberal democracy,” said Wayne Sumner, a medical ethicist at the University of Toronto who studies the evolution of norms and regulations around assisted dying. “They’ll come to it at their own speed, but it follows with these other policies.”
The change is also being driven by a convergence of political, demographic and cultural trends.
As populations age, and access to health care improves, more people are living longer. Older populations mean more chronic disease, and more people living with compromised health. And they are thinking about death, and what they will — and won’t — be willing to tolerate in the last years of their lives.
At the same time, there is diminishing tolerance for suffering that is perceived as unnecessary.
“Until very recently, we were a society where few people lived past 60 — and now suddenly we live much longer,” said Lina Paola Lara Negrette, a psychologist who until October was the director of the Dying With Dignity Foundation in Colombia. “Now people here need to think about the system, and the services that are available, and what they will want.”
Changes in family structures and communities, particularly in rapidly urbanizing middle-income countries, mean that traditional networks of care are less strong, which shifts how people can imagine living in older age or with chronic illness, she added.
“When you had many siblings and a lot of generations under one roof, the question of care was a family thing,” she said. “That has changed. And it shapes how we think about living, and dying.”
How does assisted dying work?
Beyond the ethical dilemmas, actually carrying out legalized assisted deaths involves countless choices for countries. Spain requires a waiting period of at least 15 days between a patient’s assessments (but the average wait in practice is 75 days). In most other places, the prescribed wait is less than two weeks for patients with terminal conditions, but often longer in practice, said Katrine Del Villar, a professor of constitutional law at the Queensland University of Technology who tracks trends in assisted dying
Most countries allow patients to choose between administering the drugs themselves or having a health care provider do it. When both options are available, the overwhelming majority of people choose to have a health care provider end their life with an injection that stops their heart.
In many countries only a doctor can administer the drugs, but Canada and New Zealand permit nurse practitioners to provide medically assisted deaths too.
One Australian state prohibits medical professionals from raising the topic of assisted death. A patient must ask about it first.
Who determines eligibility is another issue. In the Netherlands, two physicians assess a patient; in Colombia, it’s a panel consisting of a medical specialist, a psychologist and a lawyer. The draft legislation in Britain would require both a panel and two independent physicians.
Switzerland and the states of Oregon and Vermont are the only jurisdictions in the world that explicitly allow people who are not residents access to assisted deaths.
Most countries permit medical professionals to conscientiously object to providing assisted deaths and allow faith-based medical institutions to refuse to participate. In Canada, individual professionals have the right to refuse, but a court challenge is underway seeking to end the ability of hospitals that are controlled by faith-based organizations and that operate with public funds to refuse to allow assisted deaths on their premises.
“Even when assisted dying has been legal and available somewhere for a long time, there can be a gap between what is legal and what is acceptable — what most physicians and patients and families feel comfortable with,” said Dr. Sisco van Veen, an ethicist and psychiatrist at Amsterdam Medical University. “And this isn’t static. It evolves over time.”
Jin Yu Young in Seoul, José Bautista in Madrid, José María León Cabrera in Quito, Veerle Schyns in Amsterdam and Koba Ryckewaert in Brussels contributed reporting.
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Taking a long-distance train journey often feels like going back in time. Now, a new route opening up fast, direct access between two European countries will spin passengers back more than a century to the times of the Habsburg empire.
A new high-speed route between Italy and Slovenia is now on the cards, thanks to a newly signed agreement between state operators Trenitalia and SŽ Passenger Transport, or Slovenian Railways.
A Frecciarossa train will run eastwards from Milan to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, in seven hours. It’ll pass through storied Italian cities Venice and Trieste, as well as making stops for some of Slovenia’s noted nature attractions, including Postojna Caves and Skocjan Caves, as well as Lipica, where the famous Lipizzaner horses have been bred since 1580.
Today, the horses with their “dancing” feet are best known for the displays at Vienna’s Spanish Riding School – which makes sense, since this part of the world, on the modern Slovenia-Italy border, used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian empire (or the Habsburg empire, before 1867).
In fact the train itself should have a feeling of winding back the centuries to that earlier period. It is thought that this is the first train from Milan to Ljubljana since the empire was dissolved in 1918.
It’s also picking up the route of a night train from Budapest to Venice, which passed through Ljubljana, but finished in 2011.
Since 2018, there has been a regional train from Trieste to Ljubljana, but train staff of the two operators switch at the border at Villa Opicina station.
Although a Trenitalia representative told CNN that there is no set date for the launch, Slovenian Railways have told media that they want to start “as soon as possible” – which could mean from April. It’s expected that there will be one service per day initially, eventually expanding to two.
April will also see the launch of a Rijeka-Trieste (Villa Opicina) route from Croatian Railways.
Frecciarossa (Red Arrow) trains are capable of reaching speeds of 300 kph (284 mph) on the Italian network, although it’s unlikely they’ll go that fast on this route, at least at first, since east of Venice speeds tend to slow down.
In March 2023, the Italian government pledged 1.8 billion euros (nearly $2 billion) to upgrade the Venice-Trieste line to fully high-speed. The Slovenian lines will now be tested to see if they can also be upgraded.
“It was about time that a serious rail connection was restored between Trieste and Ljubljana – It sounds like a joke, but it is often the case in the region that the railway connections were better a century ago than they are today,” says journalist Giovanni Vale, founder of the Extinguished Countries project, which publishes guidebooks to countries that no longer exist, and is currently working on one to the Habsburg Empire.
“Trieste and Ljubljana were first connected by train in 1857, when both cities were part of the Habsburg Empire. The South Railway Company (Südbahn-Gesellschaft), which ran from Vienna to Trieste via Ljubljana, was one of the flagships of the Empire’s infrastructure. Trieste was at that time one of the most important ports in the world and its connection to Vienna was very important for the Empire.
“With the end of the First World War, Trieste became a city in the far northeast of Italy, in an almost peripheral position and rail connections to the east with Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade or Budapest were often lacking.
“Let’s hope that this is the beginning of a new season for rail connections between Trieste and the Balkans.”
The agreement follows Trenitalia’s similar initiatives with its Eurocity and Euronight trains, which connect Italy with Switzerland, Germany and Austria with direct trains. It’ll be a Eurocity route, operated by a Frecciarossa.
Trenitalia has also signed a preliminary agreement with Deutsche Bahn to bring the Frecciarossa into service on Italy-Germany routes before the end of 2026. A Milan-Munich route is on the cards, with extensions from there to other German destinations.
“The former first lady has mostly retreated from public view — and steered clear of the campaign trail — while her husband fights to return to the White House and faces increasing legal peril.
“Since leaving the White House, Melania Trump’s world has gotten smaller. Just how she likes it.”
As reported by S. Daniel Guttman
Dear MUCKA, I am meeting with a Donald on Saturday? Oh, yeah, I remember, that Donald.
Dear MUCKA, Not many people know that MUCKA means “Kitty” in Slovenian. Let’s keep that our little secret, just like my heroine, Anne Frank, kept hers.
Dear MUCKA, Donald has stored many cardboard boxes at Mar-a-Lago. Some in my closet and some in the bathrooms. Cardboard clashes with my décor and my wardrobe. I wonder what is in them?
Dear MUCKA, I saw some boxes being moved around sneakily. Maybe that’s why I can’t find my “I really don’t care, do you?” blouse. Who would want to wear that but me? Donald?? No! I don’t think so.
Dear MUCKA, When I was looking for my blouse, I discovered that there were some war plans in one of the document folders in a box. Fortunately, we are not planning to invade Slovenia. So I was relieved.
Dear MUCKA, Donald was surprised my parents are living at Trump Tower. He said to me, ”Are they still alive? I haven’t seen them since we got married and maybe not even then.”
Dear, MUCKA, I don’t believe the E. Jean Carrol accusations. Donald never offers to help me when I shop.
Dear, MUCKA, Donald asked me to attend a campaign event. That’ll cost him as much as he now owes to E. Jean Carroll.
Dear MUCKA, I am looking for Universities that Baron can attend. It is difficult to find any that haven’t heard of Donald Trump. I did find one school that had no access to the internet or mainstream media. But it was on a South Pacific Island. I’ll keep trying.
Dear MUCKA, I’m still upset that Donald didn’t follow-up on my suggestion to change all USA street signs to Slovenian. It will help Americans to learn another language and help me to know where I’m going.
Dear MUCKA, I just avoided another interview. Whew! Don’t know why the mainstream-media wants my opinions. I don’t want theirs.
Dear MUCKA, I’m so grateful my modeling career prepared me to be First Lady. Thank God I learned how to walk down a runway sexily in Stilettos. And pout.
Dear MUCKA, I tried cooking for Donald for the first time in years, but I forgot to take the wrappers off the Big Macs and the smoke from the oven fire was terrible. But on the plus side, he does like them well done.
Dear MUCKA, I used to be appreciative that Donald chose me from all the women he has grabbed in the Nozinca. Now, I’m less certain.
Dear MUCKA, I got into a big fight with Donald and he threatened to have me deported. I told him his deporting days are over and reminded him that I know where the bodies are buried, and I dug some of them up.
Dear MUCKA, I saw that Donald has kept an old basketball shoe from Shaquille O’Neal . I think I will use it as a gravy boat. I wonder what the gravy will taste like?
Dear MUCKA, I was shocked by the events at the Capital on January 6th. The clothing the well-behaved crowd wore was terrible. No designer labels. No style at all. No wonder they are in trouble.
Dear MUCKA, I will never wear a MAGA hat. It messes up my hair. Besides, what does it mean anyway? Never heard of the word when I learned English in Modeling School.
Dear MUCKA, I just interviewed another candidate for my scholarship charity. I was impressed that she got into cosmetology school on the first try. I believe she will have a major impact on the world of eyeliner.
Dear MUCKA, Uh-oh. I finally got around to reading the pre-nup I signed when I married Donald. It just entitles me to all the pots and pans I can carry in my arms out of Mar-a-Lago in one exit trip. I guess I’ll have to reconsider my filing for divorce.
Dear MUCKA, Donald was just indicted again. I’m glad he is still in the news. I’m sure he will be very happiest and Be Best.
Tomaž Vuk has the carbon. Now he just needs somewhere to send it.
Since 2020, Vuk, who sits on the board of the Salonit cement factory in Slovenia, has been plotting to get in on the ground floor of an industry poised to boom in the coming years: carbon capture.
It’s one of the ways carbon-spewing factories like the one Vuk helps run are supposed to keep operating in a greener future.
There’s just one problem: Vuk has nowhere to store any carbon he traps at the plant.
Salonit sits roughly 50 kilometers off the Gulf of Trieste, an Italian port nestled near the Adriatic Sea’s highest point. From there, Salonit can technically ship the carbon anywhere. But for now, it seems the only options are way up in the North Sea — a protracted (and, most notably, expensive) trip around the Continent.
Vuk said he’s willing to send the carbon wherever, but would of course prefer spots along the nearby Mediterranean and the Black Seas. For now, that’s not likely. So the North Sea it is.
“It might be acceptable to carry those costs for a short period of time until [closer] solutions are ready,” Vuk said.
The conundrum is a small example of a mounting problem for Europe as it races to establish the infrastructure needed to hit climate neutrality by 2050. The EU is heavily encouraging companies to invest in projects and technology that can either suck carbon from the air or prevent it from getting there in the first place. But that also means finding places to store all of that carbon.
So far, North Sea countries like Denmark and the Netherlands have dominated the industry — a fact the EU is aiming to change with new incentives and rules meant to create more storage across the bloc by 2030. But not everyone is convinced the plan will work, and some skeptics even wonder if carbon capture is really worth the sky-high investments required.
The stakes are high: Should the EU’s masterplan fail, landlocked, low-income European countries could be making investments now that never pay off, potentially taking down traditional manufacturing plants with them. That would leave the EU with an even greater economic divide — and another gap to fill in its green ambitions.
“There’s quite a risk, at least for industries in regions like Southern Central and Eastern Europe, where there are little project developments happening,” said Eadbhard Pernot, who leads the works on carbon capture for Clean Air Task Force, an NGO.“There’s a risk of deindustrialization in some parts of Europe and industrialization in other parts of Europe.”
Fragmented deployment
Over the past year, a flurry of carbon-sucking vacuums and vaults have been announced in the wealthy region bordering the North Sea. The area is home to some of Europe’s largest oil and gas sites, providing it with a plethora of places to both grab and store carbon.
In March, a project dubbed Greensand launched with the promise of first capturing carbon in Belgium before shipping it to a depleted oil field in the Danish North Sea — a project that could store 8 million tons of CO2 by 2030. And in May, the Danish Energy Agency awarded renewable utility Ørsted a 20-year contract for the Kalundborg Hub, which touts that it will remove up to half a million tons of carbon from nearby heat and power plants starting in 2026.
The Netherlands is also keeping pace. The Porthos project is slated to store no less than 2.5 million tons in depleted gas fields. And big emitters like Air Liquide, Air Products, ExxonMobil and Shell have secured storage on the site starting in 2026, when Porthos goes online.
The northern dominance is so vast that research has shown Denmark alone could develop enough storage capacity to meet the EU’s goal to erect 50 million tons of CO2 storage by 2030 — which Brussels proposed in its Net Zero Industry Act (NZIA), a legislative effort to bolster the bloc’s manufacturing of green projects like wind turbines and solar panels.
The other nearby options are EU neighbors like Norway, Iceland and the U.K. While these sites might make sense geographically, they would also leave the EU increasingly dependent on outside countries for carbon storage — a future that Brussels wants to avoid.
Prisoners of geography
The northern dominance is starting to freak out policymakers and industry leaders across the rest of Europe. They fear it will eventually erode their industrial competitiveness in a future marked by soaring carbon prices and fierce competition from outside Europe.
Currently, high-polluting manufacturers like steel and cement makers, which have to pay for their emissions under the bloc’s CO2 market, are getting a free pass for their carbon pollution — a decision made to keep EU-based industries from being overwhelmed by costs their competitors don’t always bear.
That won’t last forever, however. Last year, EU negotiators struck a deal to phase out the policy by 2034, hoping to drive up carbon prices and push industries to invest in lower-emission options, including carbon capture.
“Many are yet to grasp the consequences of the reform of the EU’s carbon market,” one EU diplomat, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told POLITICO.
Once these manufacturers are confronted with the full cost of their pollution, the diplomat argued, they will have an existential need for relatively cheap ways to absorb and store their carbon.
And those storage options are only cheap if they’re nearby.
The EU claims its plan will create these options. A proposal is in the works to spread carbon storage sites more evenly across Europe. The plan will also map out the transport needs for carbon to effectively get from where it is vacuumed up to its final resting place. The idea is to ensure that plants like Salonit aren’t left behind.
“To keep the costs of decarbonizing hard-to-abate industries at bay, Europe needs CO2 storage projects across the Continent,” said Eve Tamme, who chairs the Zero Emissions Platform, an organization advising the EU on carbon capture technology. “This helps to limit the need for expensive long-distance CO2 transportation routes.”
Work in progress
The European Commission, the EU’s executive in Brussels, also wants to encourage plants to invest in carbon trapping by guaranteeing that storage will be available.
Brussels has already called for countries to adopt a binding, EU-wide storage target of 50 million tons of CO2 by 2030 as part of its net-zero act. But the proposal has run into controversy over a clause that would force oil and gas producers to contribute to that goal.
Carbon storage leaders like Denmark and the Netherlands argued the provision would simply pull cash away from existing CO2 storage projects — benefiting fossil fuel giants in the process. Yet others countered that these are the exact companies that should be forced to help pack away the carbon after they spent years putting it in the sky.
In the end, Denmark and the Netherlands won, getting a narrowly written opt-out for oil and gas firms — but only if these quotas have been met with other projects.
Lina Strandvåg Nagell, senior manager at industrial decarbonization NGO Bellona, argued the compromise wouldn’t derail the overall ambition.
“This decision shows that storage will have to be developed across the EU,” she said.
And Brussels says the early signs are promising. In late November, Ditte Juul-Jørgensen, who heads the Commission’s energy department, said there were a growing number of carbon capture and storage projects in Southern and Eastern Europe in line to receive speedy approval and EU funding.
“Previously … projects were really situated mainly around the North Sea region,” she told an industry event. “But now they stretch from the Baltic to the Western and Eastern Mediterranean.”
But the question is whether the pace will be quick enough for people like Vuk, in Slovenia, and his fellow cement and steel compatriots across Central and Eastern Europe.
“Any action that would encourage” more carbon storage, he said, “is welcome.”
The former First Lady Melania Trump made a rare public appearance on Friday, delivering a powerful speech about becoming an American citizen.
Melania Trump gave a speech at the national archives where she said becoming a citizen takes time, stressed the importance of “guarding freedom” & “contributing to society”
Stark contrast to the Biden admins effort to grant citizenship to tens of millions of foreign invaders pic.twitter.com/g6jewYvlsm
While speaking to 25 newly naturalized citizens at the National Archives Naturalization Ceremony in Washington D.C. on Friday, Melania said that the path to becoming a U.S. citizen is “arduous.” Melania, who was born in Slovenia, recalled that she felt a “tremendous sense of pride and belonging” when she became an American citizen in 2006.
“For me, reaching the milestone of American citizenship marked the sunrise of certainty,” she said, according to The Hill. “At that exact moment, I forever discarded the layer of burden connected with whether I would be able to live in the United States. I hope you’re blanketed with similar feelings of comfort right now.”
After being born and raised in Slovenia, Melania moved to New York City to model back in 1996, and she immediately fell in love with this country and everything it has to offer. She started researching and visiting embassies “with a goal of securing a worker visa,” but she quickly found the immigration process to be challenging.
“My personal experience of traversing the challenges of the immigration process opened my eyes to the harsh realities these people face, including you, who try to become U.S. citizens,” she said.
While Melania was “devoted” to the process, she admitted that she was “certainly was not an attorney,” so she considered herself “fortunate” to have the opportunity to receive legal counsel. In 2001, Melania was able to receive a green card through the elite EB-1 program, nicknamed the “Einstein visa,” which is for people with “extraordinary ability.”
Melania concluded her speech by applauding the 25 new American citizens as she stood next to the Declaration of Independence.
“Becoming an American citizen comes with responsibility, it means actively participating in the democratic process and guarding our freedom,” she told them. “It also means leading by example and contributing to our society. It is a life altering experience that takes time, determination and sometimes, even tremendous strength.”
Melania Trump was in Washington D.C. speaking to new citizens, a job only for a First Lady.
Melania previously told Fox News that she supports her husband Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, saying that she is looking forward to “restoring hope for the future and leading America with love and strength” if she makes it to the White House once again in 2024.
If she does have the “the privilege” to be First Lady for a second time, Melania plans to once again focus on children in her quest to ensure that they have the “support and resources they need to reach their full potential.”
Back in September, Donald told NBC News that Melania would be on the campaign trail with him “pretty soon.”
“She’s a private person, a great person, a very confident person and she loves our country very much,” he said at the time. “And honestly, I like to keep her away from it. It’s so nasty and so mean.”
What a difference does make when you have a lady resigning in the White House.
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As gear reviews go, it was a glowing one: In a 60-second video clip posted on Telegram, a masked sniper sporting the death’s-head insignia of the Wagner mercenary army sings the praises of the Russian-made Orsis T-5000 rifle.
“The equipment comes very well recommended,” the soldier, pictured in the charred interior of a building, tells a war reporter from the Zvezda TV channel run by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Pulling out the clip of the weapon at his side, he continues: “It uses Western .338 caliber ammunition. It works very well. It can penetrate light cover if the enemy is behind it. And, in the open, it can strike the enemy at a range of up to 1,500 meters.”
Filings obtained by POLITICO indicate that Promtekhnologiya and another Russian firm called Tetis have acquired hundreds of thousands of rounds made by Hornady, a U.S. company that trademarks its wares as “Accurate. Deadly. Dependable.” Hornady, founded in 1949, sums up its philosophy with the phrase: “Ten bullets through one hole.”
The findings add to a growing body of evidence that supplies of lethal and nonlethal military equipment are still reaching Russia despite the West’s imposition of unprecedented sanctions in response to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year. The exigencies of war have exposed Russia’s lack of capacity to manufacture high-end sniper rounds, say defense experts, and that is fueling a flourishing black market for Western ammunition.
Information on the procurement of such gear is hiding in plain sight: Details of deals — importers, suppliers and product descriptions — can be found online by anyone with access to the Russian internet and a grasp of international customs classification codes.
Anything but bulletproof
In a “declaration of conformity” filed with a Russian government registry and dated August 12, 2022, Promtekhnologiya stated that it planned to sourcea batch of 102,200 Hornady lead bullets for the assembly of “hunting cartridges” used in “civilian weapons with a rifled barrel.” The specifications — .338 Lapua Magnum bullets weighing 285 grains — match those of a product in the Hornady catalog.
A second declaration bearing the same date is for a batch of “uncapped cartridge cases for assembling civilian firearms cartridges” made by Hornady with the same .338 Lapua Magnum specification.
The description is misleading: The .338 Lapua Magnum isn’t a “hunting cartridge;” it’s a high-powered, long-range projectile that was developed by Western militaries in the 1980s and used by their snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Reached by POLITICO, Steve Hornady, CEO of the family company based in Grand Island, Nebraska, denied selling ammunition to Russia in wartime.
“The instant Russia invaded Ukraine, we were done,” Hornady said in a brief telephone call.
Hornady declined at first to elaborate and, when asked to review the evidence, requested that it be sent by fax or courier as he did not use email. He eventually responded after POLITICO sent written requests for comment with supporting documentation by courier.
“We categorically are NOT exporting anything to Russia and have not had an export permit for Russia since 2014,” he replied. “We do not support any sale of our product to any Russian son-of-a-bitch and if we can find out how they acquire, if in fact they do, we will take all steps available to stop it.”
Hornady added that he had contacted the U.S. authorities following POLITICO’s inquiry. He pointed out that current U.S. law required that customers must obtain permission from the Department of Commerce to re-export articles made in the United States. “To the best of our knowledge, none of our customers violate that law,” he said.
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, asked which ammunition his troops used, told POLITICO they had “a huge amount of NATO-issue ammunition left over from the Ukrainian army.” In a sarcastic voice message sent to a POLITICO journalist, the Russian warlord also asked for help procuring F-35 combat jets and U.S.-made sniper rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers.
Promtekhnologiya denied filing any customs declarations to import ammunition; said it had no relationship with Hornady; and that it had the capacity to manufacture its own ammunition. The company also said in emailed comments to POLITICO that the Orsis rifle and the ammunition the company makes are intended for “hunting and sporting” purposes and are freely available on the civilian market.
Both Promtekhnologiya and Alexander Zinovyev, listed as the company’s general director in the filings, have been sanctioned by Ukraine, which cites evidence that its Orsis rifles “have been used in Russian military operations in Eastern Ukraine.”
Promtekhnologiya is also in Washington’s sights: “We take any allegation of sanctions violation or evasion seriously and are committed to ensuring that sanctions are fully enforced,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council said in response to a request for comment from POLITICO.
“We have taken steps to hold Russia accountable for its war in Ukraine and have imposed an unprecedented sanctions regime to disrupt Russia’s ability to access funds and weapons that fuel Putin’s war machine. That includes sanctioning companies like Promtekhnologiya.”
Criminal, or wilful, violations of U.S. sanctions can trigger penalties of up to $1 million per violation, as well as up to 20 years’ imprisonment for individuals. Civil penalties can run to the higher of either twice the value of the underlying transaction or around $350,000 per violation.
Describing military-grade ammunition as for hunting or sporting use, as the filings do, amounts to a thinly veiled ruse to evade targeted “smart” sanctions aimed at starving the Russian military of the means to fight the war, said defense analyst Maria Shagina.
“Strictly speaking, smart sanctions are not supposed to target anything civilian to avoid humanitarian collateral damage,” said Shagina, a research fellow at the U.K.-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. “But the targets in authoritarian countries will really exploit this.”
Steve Hornady, CEO of the family company based in Grand Island, Nebraska, denied selling ammunition to Russia in wartime | Leon Neal/Getty Images
Russia reloaded
Another Russian buyer of Hornady ammunition is a company called Tetis, which has disclosed two shipments since Russia’s full-scale invasionof Ukraine beganon February 24, 2022. The most recent was in April for more than 300,000 “units” comprising a wide range of products that checked out with the Hornady catalog.
The main owners of Tetis, Alexander Levandovsky and Sergey Senchenko — who each own stakes of 41.1 percent — have links to the Russian military.
Both were previously listed as shareholders in another company called Kampo, which according to company filings holds licenses to make weapons and military equipment and has done business with the Ministry of Defense and the Special Flight Detachment that operates Putin’s presidential plane.
Although Tetis doesn’t offer Hornady ammo on its website, it does advertise itself as an international distributor for RCBS, a U.S. maker of reloading equipment. This is used to assemble cases, primer, propellants and projectiles into cartridges that can then be fired — as seen in this video posted by a Russian gun enthusiast.
A database check revealed that the most recent declaration of conformity filed by Tetis for RCBS, for electronic weighing scales, predated Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24 of last year by just over a month.
Russia’s trade bureaucracy allows local firms to vouch for the goods they are importing by filing declarations of conformity, such as those that mention the Hornady products. This means that the supplier listed on the form may not be aware of specific shipments that could have been handled by an intermediary.
Tetis did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Matt Rice, a spokesman for RCBS owner Vista Outdoor, said Tetis was no longer an international distributor for RCBS. “Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, our business made the decision to end all sales of goods with the country,” Rice said in an email, adding that RCBS would remove the listing for Tetis from its website.
Doing the rounds
Hornady ammunition or its components are freely available in Russia, along with other high-end foreign military gear.
Take the “Sniper Shop” on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app that is popular in Russia: It features a current offer for a full range of Hornady products, with the seller inviting buyers to visit a showroom in Sokolniki, a Moscow district, and offering delivery throughout Russia by courier or post. Contacted by POLITICO, the poster confirmed the Hornady ammo was in stock but declined to comment further on how it was sourced.
Then there is “Anton,” who advertises products from Hornady and RCBS on his profile. He also touts gear from Nightforce, maker of thermal optical sights; Lapua, which helped design the eponymous .338 ammo; MDT, a maker of chassis systems, magazines and accessories for rifles; and precision gunsmith AREA 419. All are American with the exception of Lapua, which is based in Finland and owned by a Norwegian company called Nammo.
Western high-end foreign military gear seems to be freely available in Russia | Leon Neal/Getty Images
“Anton” posted an offer for Hornady cartridges last October 24. Contacted via Telegram to ask whether he was still stocking Hornady, he replied: “We don’t do ammunition.”
POLITICO has, in the course of its research, also found declarations from several other Russian companies for ammunition made in Germany, Finland and Turkey.
The thriving black market reflects a structural deficit in Russia’s war economy. Its military-industrial complex can produce good small arms, like the Orsis rifle, but lacks the capacity to churn out the amount of ammunition needed by an army fighting a war across a front stretching hundreds of miles.
“Despite the quality of the rifles produced, a successful hit directly depends on the components used in the cartridges, and they, unfortunately, are imported,” a correspondent lamented in a post on a Russian military news site a few months into the war. Gunpowder produced in Russia lacks stability, the correspondent added, saying this is “unacceptable in the framework of high-precision shooting.”
The continuing access to specialized rifle cartridges made in the West, such as the .338 Lapua Magnum, by a sanctioned Russian small arms manufacturer like Orsis maker Promtekhnologiya is “egregious,” said Gary Somerville, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a British defense think tank.
“At present, there is only one manufacturer of this cartridge in Russia,” he added. “Preventing the shipment of these types of ammunition from Western countries to Russia is an easy win for those seeking to constrain Russia’s ability to wage war in Ukraine.”
Balkan route
It’s not just ammunition from the U.S. that is reaching the battlefront around Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, recently captured by Prigozhin’s mercenaries after a bloody, months-long battle.
There also appear to be cartridges from the European Union, which has imposed no fewer than 10 rounds of sanctions against Russia in a so-far inconclusive attempt to starve Putin’s war machine of the means to fight on.
Promtekhnologiya has filed four declarations since October covering shipments of 460,000 units described as “Orsis hunting cartridges” — most are of the .338 Lapua Magnum type. These identify a Slovenian company called Valerian as the supplier.
The first of the filings, dated October 13, 2022, includes an air waybill number whose first three digits — 262 — indicate that the shipper was Ural Airlines, a Russian carrier. It was not immediately possible to trace the route of the flight, however.
Valerian was founded on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with paid-in capital of €7,500 by Gašper Heybal, who previously worked for U.S. military outfitter Voodoo Tactical. On its home page, Valerian says: “Our goal is to equip you for your mission, whatever it might be, and wherever you are going.”
In online posts over the past decade — including on a Facebook Group called EU Guns with a declared mission of “easier transfer of weapons between European gun owners” — Heybal has done little to dispel the impression that he is an active small arms dealer.
Bakhmut was recently captured by Prigozhin’s mercenaries, the Wagner mercenary group| Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images
The telephone number Heybal shared publicly in those posts is the same as the one for Valerian, which is registered at an address in a village around 40 minutes’ drive southeast of the Slovenian capital Ljubljana.
Reached at that number, Heybal denied that Valerian had shipped ammunition to Russia: “We don’t sell any … firearms or ammunition, and also there is an embargo on Russia,” said Heybal.
In a follow-up email on the declarations of conformity, Heybal said: “Firstly, we must stress that we do not know, nor do we understand how the name of our company, Valerian d.o.o., appears on the document.”
“Secondly, Valerian is not listed there as a supplier but as the producer, and this is not possible, as we do not produce ammunition. That being said, it still makes absolutely no sense to us as to how our name could appear on it. We are glad you brought this to our attention so we can figure out what is going on.”
A Slovenian diplomat said that, while Valerian had never applied for authorization to export weapons or ammunition to Russia, it had shipped “individual parts” to Kyrgyzstan.
The Central Asian state is one of the countries that the EU has in mind as it discusses an 11th round of measures targeting third countries that are suspected of helping Russia evade sanctions.
“The competent services in the Republic of Slovenia have already initiated the appropriate procedures to investigate the facts concerning the company,” the diplomat told POLITICO, adding that they would verify the possible diversion of goods to the Russian Federation. “Slovenia is firmly committed to supporting Ukraine, we have been supportive of all sanctions packages and especially this anti-circumvention one.”
An official at the European Commission deflected a request for comment, saying the bloc’s member countries were responsible for implementing sanctions. “As this seems like a very specific case, these allegations need to be investigated further by the competent authorities,” the official said.
Sergey Panov reported from Spain, Sarah Anne Aarup from Brussels and Douglas Busvine from Berlin. Additional reporting by Steven Overly in Washington.
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Sergey Panov, Sarah Anne Aarup and Douglas Busvine
Europe has special forces on the ground in Ukraine. Poland and Slovenia are providing nearly half of the tanks heading to Kyiv. And Hungary may be letting arms through its airspace.
Those are just a few of the eye-catching details about Europe’s participation in the war buried in a 53-page dossier POLITICO reviewed from a leak of unverified U.S. military intelligence documents.
The disclosure has generated a tempest of head-spinning revelations that has the U.S. playing clean-up with allies. The documents detail American doubts about Ukraine’s spring offensive, suggest it was spying on South Korea and display intelligence accusing Egypt of plotting to prop up Russia’s quixotic war.
Yet Europe, for the most part, has been spared these relationship-damaging divulgences.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t knowledge to be gleaned about Europe’s war effort from the documents, however. The leaked files contain insights on everything from a U.K.-dominated special forces group in Ukraine to how — and when — France and Spain are getting a key missile system to the battlefield. The documents also contain allegations that Turkey is a potential source of arms for Russian mercenaries.
POLITICO has not independently verified the documents, and there have been indications that some of the leaked pages were doctored. But the U.S. has acknowledged the intelligence breach and arrested a suspect late on Thursday.
Here are a few of POLITICO’s findings after poring over the file.
Europe has boots on the ground
There is a Europe-heavy special forces group operating in Ukraine — at least as of March 23 — according to the documents.
The United Kingdom dominates the 97-person strong “US/NATO” contingent with 50 special forces members. The group also includes 17 people from Latvia, 15 from France and one from the Netherlands. Fourteen U.S. personnel round out the team.
The leaked information does not specify which activities the forces are carrying out or their location in Ukraine. The documents also show the U.S. has about 100 personnel in total in the country.
Predictably, governments have remained mostly mum on the subject. The Brits have refused to comment, while the White House has conceded there is a “small U.S. military presence” at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, stressing that the troops “are not fighting on the battlefield.” France previously denied that its forces were “engaged in operations in Ukraine.”
The rest of the countries did not reply to a request for comment.
Europe is providing the bulk of the tanks
A Ukrainian tank drives down a street in the heavily damaged town of Siversk | Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Tanks are one area where Europe — collectively — is outpacing America.
Within the file, one page gives an overview of the 200 tanks that U.S. allies have committed to sending Ukraine — 53 short of what the document says Ukraine needs for its spring offensive.
Poland and Slovenia appear to be the largest contributors, committing nearly half of the total, according to an assessment dated February 23. France and the U.K. are also key players, pitching in 14 tanks each.
Then there’s the Leopard 2 crew, which is donating versions of the modern German battle tanks that Ukraine spent months convincing allies it needed. That lineup includes Germany, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Finland.
The document indicates Germany had committed just four Leopard 2s — the most high-end model — but Berlin said in late March that it had delivered 18 Leopards to Ukraine. It also shows Sweden pledging 10 tanks of an “unknown type,” which media reports suggest may be Leopards.
Separately, the U.S. has said it will send Ukraine 31 of its modern tanks, though those aren’t expected to arrive until at least the fall.
Europe’s deliveries are lagging, too
The idea behind Europe taking the lead on tanks was partly that it could get the tanks to Ukraine and ready for battle swiftly — ideally in time for the spring offensive.
But the document shows that as of February 23, only 31 percent of the 200 tanks pledged had gotten to the battlefield. It did note, however, that the remaining 120 tanks were on track to be transferred.
Separately, another leaked page recounts that France told Italy on February 22 that a joint missile system would not be ready for Ukraine until June. That’s the very end of a timeline the Italian defense ministry laid out in February, when officials said the anti-aircraft defense system would be delivered to Ukraine “in the spring of 2023.”
Hungary sees America as the enemy — but might be letting allies use its airspace
Hungary pops up a couple of times in the pile of creased pages, offering more insights into a country that regularly perplexes its own allies.
The most eye-popping nugget is buried in a “top secret” CIA update from March 2, which says Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán branded the U.S. “one of his party’s top three adversaries during a political strategy session” on February 22.
The remarks, it notes, constitute “an escalation of the level of anti-American rhetoric” from Orbán.
Indeed, Orbán’s government has charted its own course during the war, promoting Russia-friendly narratives, essentially calling on Ukraine to quit and caustically dismissing allied efforts to isolate Russia’s economy.
However, the leaked U.S. documents also indicate Hungary — which shares a small border with Ukraine — may be secretly letting allies use its airspace to move arms toward the battlefield, despite pledges to bar such transfers.
Intelligence leaks suspect Jack Teixeira reflected in an image of the Pentagon in Washington, DC | Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
One of the leaked documents details a plan for Ukrainian pilots to fly donated helicopters from Croatia to Ukraine “through Hungarian air space.” If true, the information would not only show Hungary is letting arms pass through its skies, but also contradict press reports indicating the helicopters would be transferred on the ground or through flights into Poland.
Hungarian and Croatian officials didn’t reply to requests for comment.
Did the Brits downplay a confrontation with Russia?
Publicly, the U.K. has told a consistent story: A Russian fighter jet “released” a missile “in the vicinity” of a U.K. surveillance plane over the Black Sea last September. A close call, to be sure, but not a major incident.
The leaked U.S. dossier, however, hints at something more serious. It describes the incident as a “near shoot-down” of the British aircraft. The language appears to go beyond what U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told lawmakers last October. This week, The New York Times reported that the Russian pilot had locked on the British aircraft before the missile failed to fire properly.
The document also details several other close encounters in recent months between Russian fighter jets and U.S., U.K. and French surveillance aircraft — a subject that jumped into the news last month when a Russian fighter jet collided with a U.S. drone, sending it crashing into the Black Sea.
Wallace has not commented on the leaked description, and a ministry spokesperson on Thursday pointed to a prior statement saying there was a “serious level of inaccuracy” in the divulged dossier.
Turkey is the war’s middleman in Europe
Turkey has portrayed itself as a conciliator between Ukraine and Russia, helping negotiate a deal to keep grain shipments flowing through the Black Sea and maintaining diplomatic ties with Russia while also providing Ukraine with drones.
The leaked pile of clandestine U.S. intelligence reports, however, shows a darker side to Turkey’s position as a middleman that distinctly favors Russia.
One page describes how Turkey helped both Russia and its ally Belarus evade strict Western sanctions — a concern U.S. officials have expressed publicly.
For Belarus, the document says, “Turkish companies purchased sanctioned goods” and then “sold them in European markets.” In the opposite direction, it adds, these companies “resold goods from Europe to Russia.”
More alarming is another leaked document that describes a meeting in February between “Turkish contacts” and the Wagner Group, the private militia firm fighting for the Kremlin. It says Wagner was seeking “to purchase weapons and equipment from Turkey” for the group’s “efforts in Mali and Ukraine.”
The information, which the document says came from “signals intelligence” — a euphemism for digital surveillance — does not explain whether the purchases have occurred.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The EU was quick to hit Russia with sanctions after Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine — but it took time and an escalation of measures before Moscow started to feel any real damage.
Since the war started in late February last year, November was the first month when the value of EU imports from Russia was lower than in the same month of 2021. Until then, the bloc had been sending more cash than before the conflict — every month, for nine months. More recent data is not yet available.
The main reason behind this? Energy dependency on Russia and skyrocketing energy prices. But that’s not the whole story: Some EU countries were much quicker than others to reduce trade flows with Moscow — and some were still increasing them at the end of last year.
Here is a full breakdown of how the war has changed EU trade with Russia, in figures and charts:
The boom gates at Croatian border posts swung up at midnight Sunday as the country joined Europe’s zone of free movement as the country also adopted the euro as its currency.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hailed “two immense achievements,” speaking alongside Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and Slovenian President Nataša Pirc Musar at a border post in the town of Bregana.
“There is no place in Europe where it is more true today that it is a season of new beginnings and new chapters than here at the border between Croatia and Slovenia,” von der Leyen said.
“Nothing is the same after this,” said Plenković, noting the convenience that free movement and currency union will bring to Croatians.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the former Yugoslavian republic joining the EU. Von der Leyen praised the hard work of the Croatian people and singled out Plenković for pushing through the reforms needed to make the rapid ascension into the EU’s currency club.
She said the euro “brings macroeconomic stability and credibility” at home and abroad.
“Our citizens and the economy will be better protected from crises,” said Plenković.
But more than that, von der Leyen said, the euro coin imprinted with the pine marten — which gave its name to Croatia’s former currency, the kuna — is “a symbol of the successful union between your national identity and your European destiny.”
The adoption of the euro comes on the back of a long campaign to demonstrate that Croatia can adhere to the currency zone’s requirements for economic management. Croatian Finance Minister Marko Primorac told POLITICO last week that he expected the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio to fall steeply in the coming years as the recovery from the pandemic continues.
Shortly after midnight, Primorac withdrew the first euros from a Croatian ATM.
The entry into the Schengen zone means the removal of land and sea border checks with Croatia’s European neighbors. Airport checks from the 26 other countries that participate in the scheme will end in March.
The fall of these barriers to movement is “the final affirmation of our European identity, for which generations of Croats fought and fought,” said Interior Minister Davor Božinović, who opened the barrier at Bregana at midnight on New Year’s Day alongside his Slovenian counterpart, Sanja Ajanović Hovnik.
Parties were organized by citizens at the border. Von der Leyen said those living close to Slovenia and Hungary would see “tangible results” as they were able to travel freely across the frontier for employment and shopping. “Communities will grow closer together,” she said.
The Commission president also noted the responsibility that joining Schengen confers on Croatia, at a time when migration pressures are a matter of growing political tension between the bloc’s members.
“We will need to work very closely together to protect Schengen and preserve its benefits,” said von der Leyen. “In Schengen, we rely on each other and we know that we can trust you and that we can rely on Croatia.”
In a statement, Slovenia’s Hovnik congratulated Croatia on a “historic” step, which her country took just a year before, and tried to settle Slovenian anxiety about security along the newly open border.
“It is an event for which we have been preparing for a long time on both sides of the border,” she said.
LJUBLJANA, Slovenia — Liberal rights advocate Natasa Pirc Musar won a runoff Sunday to become Slovenia’s first female head of state, and said she will seek to bridge the deep left-right divide in the Alpine nation of 2 million.
With nearly all of the votes counted in the small European Union nation, Pirc Musar led Slovenia’s conservative former Foreign Minister Anze Logar by 54% to 46%. Her victory boosts the country’s liberal bloc following the center-left coalition victory in Slovenia’s parliamentary election in April.
“My first task will be to open a dialogue among all Slovenians,” she said as her election team celebrated. “In the democratic election, Slovenians have shown what kind of a country they want.”
“All my life I’ve advocated the same values: democracy, human rights, tolerance. It’s time to stop dealing with the past. Many things have to be done in the future,” she declared.
Logar conceded defeat, saying he hopes Pirc Musar “will carry out all the promises” that she made during the campaign.
Pirc Musar, 54, will be the first woman to serve as president since Slovenia became independent amid the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991. A prominent lawyer, Pirc Musar had represented former U.S. first lady Melania Trump in copyright and other cases in her native Slovenia.
She trailed Logar in the first round of voting two weeks ago.
But since none of the seven contenders who competed in the first round managed to gather more than 50% support to claim outright victory, Logar and Pirc Musar went to a runoff. Analysts in Slovenia had predicted that centrist and liberal voters would rally behind Pirc Musar.
Pirc Musar will succeed President Borut Pahor, a centrist politician who had already served two terms.
While the presidency is largely ceremonial in Slovenia, the head of state still is seen as a person of authority. Presidents nominate prime ministers and members of the constitutional court, who are then elected in parliament, and appoints members of the anti-corruption commission.
Logar, 46, served under former populist Prime Minister Janez Jansa, who moved Slovenia to the right while in power and faced accusations of undemocratic and divisive policies. Jansa was ousted from power in the parliamentary election in April.
Lawyer Nataša Pirc Musar won a runoff vote on Sunday to become Slovenia’s first female president, according to preliminary results.
With nearly all of the votes counted, Pirc Musar led Slovenia’s conservative former right-wing Foreign Minister Anže Logar by 54 percent to 46 percent, according to media reports. A prominent lawyer, Pirc Musar had represented former U.S. first lady Melania Trump in copyright and other cases in her native Slovenia.
Her victory boosts the country’s liberal bloc following the center-left coalition’s victory in Slovenia’s parliamentary election in April.
“My first task will be to open a dialogue among all Slovenians,” Pirc Musar said as her election team celebrated, the Associated Press reported.
Logar conceded defeat, saying he hopes Pirc Musar “will carry out all the promises” that she made during the campaign.
Pirc Musar, 54, will be the first woman to serve as president since Slovenia became independent amid the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991.
LJUBLJANA, Slovenia — A right-wing politician and a centrist independent candidate will face each other in a runoff presidential election in Slovenia after no candidate achieved an outright victory in the first round of voting Sunday, partial results showed.
Former Foreign Minister Anze Logar was leading the race with 34% of the vote, followed by lawyer and human rights advocate Natasa Pirc Musar with nearly 27%, state election authorities said after counting most of the ballots.
Trailing third was Social Democrat Milan Brglez, the candidate of the ruling liberal government, who garnered some 15% of the vote, according to the official tally.
Since none of the seven contenders who competed in the election managed to gather more than 50% of the ballots needed for an outright victory, a runoff between Logar and Pirc Musar will be held on Nov. 13.
While Logar took a lead on Sunday, analysts in Slovenia have predicted the tables could turn in the runoff if Slovenia’s centrist and liberal voters rally behind Pirc Musar.
Logar, 46, served under former populist Prime Minister Janez Jansa, who moved Slovenia to the right while in power and faced accusations of non-democratic and divisive policies.
A victory for Logar in the second round therefore might get interpreted as a setback for the liberal coalition that ousted Jansa from power six months ago.
During the presidential campaign, Logar has sought to present himself as a unifier. He said “some may have seen this as me distancing myself (from Jansa,) but I was actually being me, Anže Logar, a candidate.”
If Pirc Musar wins, she would become the first female president of Slovenia since the country became independent from the former Yugoslavia in 1991.
Known as an LGBTQ rights advocate, Pirc Musar said she expected a “battle of values” in the runoff.
“I’m looking forward to the second round,” she said. “I’m looking forward to the final.”
Logar said he expected the debate to focus on issues important to Slovenia.
Turnout by 1400 GMT was nearly 35%, somewhat higher than for the previous presidential election five years ago, election officials said as polls closed.
Slovenia’s 1.7 million eligible voters are choosing a successor to incumbent Borut Pahor. He has served two full five-year terms and was banned from running for a third.
While in office, Pahor tried to bridge Slovenia’s left-right divide that remains a source of political tension in the traditionally moderate and stable nation of 2 million.
Prime Minister Robert Golob said the future president should have “moral authority” on the country’s political scene and “great trust among Slovenians.”
Ziga Jelenec, a resident of Ljubljana, the capital, said he believed the election will show “how much our society is divided.”
