Who would have guessed that EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s embarrassing (and frankly, undemocratic) obsession with reaching the desired gender balance in her new cabinet would backfire so spectacularly that it might even cripple the entire formation process? Well, nearly everyone but her, apparently. Coupled with von der Leyen’s biggest weakness, transparency—or the lack thereof—the political storm she stirred up in Slovenia perfectly encapsulates everything that’s wrong with her rule.
As we explained in several articles before, von der Leyen began forming her second Commission by pleading with member states to nominate both male and female candidates for her to choose from, even though the treaties say that should be none of her business. When she inevitably got “a middle finger” from countries instead, as one diplomat put it, she began pressuring smaller and politically weaker member states to change their picks to women by dangling more influential portfolios in front of them if they did.
She did manage to persuade one country—Romania—before the official deadline for nominations came to pass, and later, another one—Slovenia—but only after its initial male candidate, Tomaž Vesel, was locked in and the liberal PM Robert Golob said he was “confident” he was the right man for the job.
The official story is that Vesel withdrew on his own accord because he realized he wouldn’t be a good fit after all, which then opened the door for Kos’s nomination. But later, it was reported that Golob received a letter from von der Leyen prior to that decision in which the Commission president supposedly rejected Vesel as a candidate and asked for a female instead—without having any legal ground to do so.
The question is whether that letter actually contained subtle blackmail in the form of tying an important post to compliance. If the rumors are true, Ljubljana was promised the much sought-after enlargement portfolio in return for swapping Vesel for the female nominee, Marta Kos. With Ukraine standing at the door, enlargement will take a central role in the next mandate, which will make the country of two million people much more influential in Brussels than it usually is.
The problem is that the parliamentary committee that is supposed to finalize Kos’ nomination is chaired by Franc Beznik, a close ally of former Prime Minister Janez Janša, the leader of the main conservative opposition party SDS. In the spirit of transparency, Beznik now demands to see von der Leyen’s letter to Golob before he puts the nomination on the agenda.
In other words, the opposition wants to force Golob to admit he pressured Vesel to withdraw after he was blackmailed by von der Leyen to do so. The PM has so far refused to release the document, so the whole process is on pause. This domestic deadlock effectively left Slovenia’s seat unfilled in the meantime, which means von der Leyen can’t proceed with presenting her candidates to the European Parliament either, stalling the formation of the new Commission entirely.
“We have witnesses who prove that Golob put pressure on Vesel to resign and to lie in public that he resigned himself,” Beznik stated, adding that he will schedule the meeting for Friday, September 13th, provided that he sees the letter before that.
“I think it is our right to know what President Ursula von der Leyen requested from the government and why the government decided to switch the candidate. That is the basic rule of transparency,” said Matej Tonin, an opposition MEP from the smaller conservative New Slovenia party.
According to ex-PM Janša, the story is problematic even if von der Leyen didn’t promise anything in return, simply because she should have no power to dismiss member states’ candidates for any reason. “There is no legal ground which allows the [President of the European Commission] to reject a candidate before the hearing in the [European Parliament],” Janša wrote on X, adding that both von der Leyen’s letter and Vesel’s supposed resignation are still hidden from the public, and it has the right to familiarize itself with both documents.
The former prime minister explained to The European Conservative that Kos’ candidacy brings forth additional issues besides just the lack of transparency and disregarding member state sovereignty.
There is evidence in the archives that Martha Kos began her career as a journalist in the ‘80s as an informant of the communist Yugoslavia’s secret police, UDBA. In the early ‘90s, she moved to Germany to work for Deutsche Welle, and Janša believes she was sent there to continue reporting back to the secret police.
After the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Kos maintained close ties with Slovenia’s post-communist political elites and went on to become the Slovene ambassador to Germany and then Switzerland without any prior political experience. She resigned from the latter post in 2020 after being accused of abusing her staff but continues to live and work in Switzerland.
“Marta Kos does not meet any of the criteria publicly defended by the President of the EC,” Janša told us. “Throughout her entire activities, she has behaved as a divisive person, attacking everyone who is not far left and she has been especially hostile towards center-right politicians. In her official biography sent to parliament, she stated that her main achievement being an ambassador in Germany was fighting for gender and LGTB equality.”
If one and only criteria—being a woman and woke—can outweigh all others, then there is no future for the EU.
The former prime minister also explained that the government officially requested the parliament to confirm Kos’ nomination only on Wednesday, September 12th, and according to internal rules, Beznik has 14 days to call the session. And he will do so, Janša added, but only if the Golob government delivers both necessary documents.
This is not the first time the lack of transparency in Brussels has become the focus of discussion in relation to Slovenia. The EU’s rather ironically named Transparency Commissioner Věra Jourová still refuses to release key documents regarding a meeting she had with the Slovene Constitutional Court in 2023, during which she is suspected of having pressured the court’s president to purge all conservatives from the country’s public broadcaster, which turned out to be only the first step in the government’s brutal crackdown on Slovenia’s entire conservative media landscape.
