Slovenia's term raises specter of EU's threat from within

Tiny Slovenia has taken charge of the world’s largest trading bloc, but its presidency got off to a rocky start

KRANJ, Slovenia -- Tiny Slovenia took charge of the world’s largest trading bloc this week, and immediately shone a harsh spotlight on one of the European Union’s most vexing problems: How to accommodate increasingly vocal member countries with very different visions of Europe’s future. Already, nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland are worrying their more politically mainstream partners in the 27-nation EU. Some fear that new legislation introduced by the two countries could undermine democratic standards and the independence of the judiciary. Then on Thursday, Slovenia’s return to the European stage — it took over the EU’s rotating presidency for six months — was marked by concerns about the right-wing government’s record on media freedoms and its failure to nominate legal experts to the fraud-busting European Public Prosecutor’s Office. For Prime Minister Janez Jansa — who leads the Alpine nation of just 2 million people nestled between Austria, Hungary and Italy — Slovenia is a misunderstood victim of “double standards,” sometimes at the hands of the EU’s increasingly powerful executive branch, the European Commission.