EU Council

Ljubljana – Justice Minister Lilijana Kozlovič has handed her resignation, the Justice Ministry confirmed for the STA. The reason is the government’s decision to annul the procedure to appoint Slovenia’s two European delegated prosecutors and to publish a new call for applications, which Kozlovič sees no justified grounds for.

President Rumen Radev announced that he does not accept EU historians to get involved in the work of the N. Macedonian-Bulgarian historical commission, Bulgarian and Macedonian media wrote during his visit to Rome together with his Macedonian counterpart Stevo Pendarovski.

The protracted conflicts in the Eastern Neighborhood and the wider Black Sea region, EU-Africa relations and the EU's strategic vision for the Indo-Pacific region were some of the subjects discussed at the informal meeting of the EU Foreign Ministers (Gymnich) held Wednesday and Thursday in Lisbon, under the Portuguese Presidency of the EU Council, the Foreign Ministry informs in a release.

Germany's Minister for Europe, Michael Roth, said on a visit to Skopje that there is a chance of a breakthrough between Bulgaria and North Macedonia that would allow the start of North Macedonia's much-delayed EU accession talks on June 22 in the EU Council.

Romania's Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu is attending today an informal meeting of the European Union heads of diplomacy (Gymnich format) in Lisbon, Portugal, under the Portuguese presidency of the EU Council.

Brussels/Ljubljana – Prime Minister Janez Janša highlighted the EU’s resilience and post-pandemic recovery as key topics of Slovenia’s upcoming EU presidency at today’s virtual meeting with the European Parliament’s Conference of Presidents. Slovenia will cooperate closely with the Parliament, Janša said.

The European Union agreed May 24 to impose sanctions on Belarus, including banning its airlines from using the airspace and airports of the 27-nation bloc, amid fury over the forced diversion of a passenger jet to arrest an opposition journalist.

Skopje – Foreign minister of Slovenia, Austria and the Czech Republic, Anže Logar, Alexander Schallenberg and Jakub Kulhanek, expressed support to North Macedonia’s EU path at a working visit to the country on Saturday. Macedonian FM Bujar Osmani thanked for their support and called for EU accession talks to start as soon as possible.

Brussels – Finance Minister Andrej Šircelj took part on Saturday in an informal session of the EU’s Economic and Financial Affairs Council, focussing on efforts to ensure a balanced and inclusive post-pandemic recovery. He said that despite the recent improvement in the economic forecasts support should not be lifted too quickly.

Berlin – German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas pledged Germany’s support to Slovenia during its presidency to the EU Council ahead of his meeting with Slovenia’s Anže Logar in Berlin on Wednesday. He highlighted the importance of the EU’s enlargement to the Western Balkans and the rule of law. Logar thanked him for the support.