Slovenia prepares for summer of discontent

Ljubljana, Slovenia – In Slovenia, few traits are as highly prized as gospodariti, literally the ability to manage finances prudently. Gospodariti was often cited to explain Slovenia’s emergence as an industrial motor of Marshal Tito’s Yugoslav system during the Cold War. As Yugoslavia collapsed in bloody fratricide, gospodariti again came to the rescue, helping a newly independent nation of just two million people to fashion a flourishing economy on the edge of a warzone.

Two decades later Slovenia’s cherished reputation for fiscal rectitude has, like the status of its government bonds, been reduced to junk.

On May 29, the European Commission told Slovenia that its heavily indebted banking system would require an independent review. The same report gave Slovenia until 2015 to bring its budget deficit below the European Union threshold of 3 percent of gross domestic product.

The Commission also called on Prime Minister, Alenka Bratusek, to push forward with a package of fiscal proposals announcedlast month. These measures include the sale of fifteen publicly-owned businesses, a 2 percent increase in Value Added Tax (VAT) and the creation of a “bad bank”.

Slovenia appears to have staved off the short-term threat of becoming the sixth Eurozone member to receive a bailout — but everything is far from green in this picturesque Alpine state.

Difficult transition

Ljubljana, Slovenia’s compact capital, is peppered with empty apartment blocks and unused retail units. Across the country, emigration is on the rise. Unemployment, historically low even after communism, stands at over 13 percent. Lack of infrastructure investment has terminally weakened a once powerful manufacturing sector.

Slovenia has twice been in recession since 2009. This year the economy is expected to shrink by around 2 percent. Prospects for growth are “weak even in a quite long medium term horizon,” a leading Slovenian economist who spoke on condition of anonymity, said in Ljubljana, the capital. “We have a contracting domestic sector and an exporting sector that is slowly losing momentum.”

When Slovenia gained its independence in 1991 it was by far the most developed of the former communist economies of Eastern Europe. Tito’s 1974 reforms of Yugoslavia’s socialist system helped open the country up, socially and economically. Taking advantage of its industrial workforce and its location between Central Europe and the Balkans, international companies such as Bayer and Renault built factories in Slovenia.

“We had communism which was not as severe as in other countries,” said Primoz Cirman, an economics writer for Dnevnik, a leading Slovenian newspaper daily newspaper. “The fist was not as iron as it was in other countries, it was more mellow.”

In the early 1990s Slovenia’s first generation of post-independence leaders looked to consolidate the country’s economic strength within its borders, rather than follow the privatisation drive in much of Eastern Europe. “For the first time in our history we were the masters of our own property. We thought ‘let’s not waste it, let’s privatise slowly,” said Cirman.

The roots of Slovenia’s current crisis lie in this uneasy transition from socialism to the free market. Many of Slovenia’s best companies remained in the hands of the state and a new generation of ‘managers’. Many of these managerial executives took out huge loans to buy controlling stakes in the businesses they ran.

Slovenian banks relied on the cheap credit that flowed in the wake of joining the European Union in 20004 and, particularly, the Euro currency three years later to fund these managerial buyouts. When the credit crunch hit in 2008 loans stopped performing.

Attempts by Slovenian bank to plug the gap in their finances by tightening lending to the national economy has contributed to the slowdown in Slovenia but not solved the country’s banking crisis. Its two leading banks, Nova Ljubljanska Banka and Nova Kreditna Banka Maribor, are badly in need of recapitalisation. Last month, Nova Ljubljanska Banka’s Chief Executive Officer Janko Medja said that the bank would transfer €1.3bn ($1.69bn) of non-performing loans to the new “bad” bank.

“Slovenia’s problem was not the (global) economic crisis it was the naivety of the banking sector,” said Igor Luksic, a professor of politics at Ljubljana University and president of the opposition Social Democrats. “There was a great appetite for real estate and the great appetite of managers who wanted to buy their companies. That made the crisis of the banking sector.”

‘State of shock’

The crisis has also laid bare the close connections between business and politics in Slovenia. Earlier this year, Prime Minister, Janez Jansa, was forced to step down after a report from a national anti-corruption agency identified irregularities in his tax returns. Ninety-four per cent of Slovenians consider bribes to be a normal practice in business, according to a recent study by Ernst & Young.

It is not all bad news for Slovenia. At 56 percent, public debt is well below the EU average. The Slovenian banking sector is just 1.6 times GDP. There are some success business stories, especially in technology. But with an export-led economy and a paucity of lending at home, there is no end in sight for the Slovenia’s economic travails, despite Wednesday’s cautious green light from Brussels.

“The economy has collapsed. We have a corrupted political class and a managerial system,” said Franc Trcek, professor of sociology at the University of Ljubljana. “People have said that they have enough. At the same time half of the people will go and vote for the old parties. The other half are in apathy.”

On the streets of Slovenia, apathy has given way to frustration. Last autumn, a series of protests broke out over the decision to introduce speed cameras in Maribor, a once prosperous industrial city near the border with Austria. Thousands took to the streets in what became known as the “Maribor Uprising”.

For the first time since Slovenia’s independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, riot police fired tear gas on its citizens. Maribor’s mayor, Franc Kangler, was forced to step down, but not before the protests had spread across Slovenia, contributing to the downfall of the Jansa government in Ljubljana.

The demonstrations have died down, for now, but journalist Primoz Cirman believes they could reignite again. “The fire is out but the fuel is still there,” he said as a summer shower pours down on the outdoor market on Petkovsek Embankment in Ljubljana.

As for Slovenia, Cirman said that the current crisis shows that the country didn’t manage the transition from communism to capitalism as well as it – and the rest of the world – had thought. “We are now in the state of shock that Slovenia avoided 20 years ago. Maybe our story is proof that you can’t change systems without a shock.”