Newsletter - January 2025

We wish you a happy and healthy new year 2025!

Stay in good spirits and welcome to our monthly Volt Slovenia newsletter.

Topics:

What's happening in Volt Slovenia?

• Recap of last year on our Meet&Greet

• Collecting signatures for Volt Germany on the Ljubljana christmas market

New from Europe:

• The end of the Hungarian presidency of the Council of the European Union

• Georgia’s dream turns into a European nightmare

• Continuous protests in Serbia against alleged corruption

News from other chapters:

• Volt Germany collected over 45.000 signatures to run in the snap elections

• Visiting the italian ghost town migration centers in Albania

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What's happening in Volt Slovenia?

Recap of our Meet&Greet to end 2024

We met for our last meeting of the year at Sax Pub and spent a great time discussing the past months, writing our Statutes and Programme as well as planning the upcoming year.

We hope that we will finish our work on the programme soon after which it will be time to start finding our 200 founding members willing to support us with their signature to create Volt Slovenija. Expect an update in the following newsletter

If you want to join us putting the final touches on Volt Slovenia and help with the party foundation, join us!

👉 Become a member

Collecting signatures on the Ljubljana christmas market

We also headed out to the Ljubljana Christmas market to help Volt Germany collect signatures to run in their national elections. Armed with 16 different forms because every region collects signatures separately we enjoyed spotting German tourists in the crowd. We had interesting conversations about politics in Germany and Slovenia and received plenty of praise and plenty of signatures for making our paneuropean idea a real thing.

News from Europe

The end of the Hungarian presidency of the Council of the European Union

On January 1st, Poland took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union from Hungary and all across Europe, you could hear a sigh of relief. Hungary this week also lost 1B€ of European funding for failing rule-of-law reforms. With continuous allegations of corruption and serious competition in the 2026 elections, we might soon witness a change similar to Poland and Hungary rejoining the pro-european block.

If you want to read more about the Hungarian Council presidency, the Green MEP from Germany where our Volt MEPs also sit, has a good summary:

👉 Read his analysis

Georgia’s dream turns into a European nightmare

(Photo: BBC)

Protests in Georgia after the recent presidential elections have not subsided as the population continues to take to the street for alleged election fraud. Nevertheless, the new president Mikheil Kavelashvili of the “Georgia's dream” party was sworn in on December 29th promising to end the process of moving Georgia towards eventual EU membership.

Our MEP Reinier van Lanschot recently went to Georgia in a show of support and also met with outgoing president Salome Zourabichvili - See his recap here:

👉 Reinier's recap

Continuous protests in Serbia against alleged corruption

Closer to home, the tensions are also high in Serbia, where protests against alleged corruption after the collapse of a part of the new Novi Sad railway station with numerous casualties continue. Corruption and lack of impunity also weigh heavily on the reputation of politics in Slovenia. Something we will try to change with when launching Volt Slovenija.

News from other Volt chapters

Volt Germany collected over 45.000 signatures to run in the snap elections

In just a few weeks, Volt Germany has collected over 45 000 signatures (including the ones we sent from Ljubljana) to be on the ballot in all 16 regions in the February 23rd snap national elections. The lead candidate, Maral Koohestanian is currently on a tour through Europe to learn about best practice politics in other countries. We also love the campaign slogan: Let’s take the future back! And will support Volt Germany during their campaign. Follow Maral and the German team in their bid to enter the Bundestag:
👉 Volt Germany on Instagram
👉 Maral Koohestanian on Instagram

Visiting the italian ghost town migration centers in Albania

Our MEP Anna Strolenberg together with the Volt Europa Co-president used our recent General Assembly in Tirana to visit the Italian camp to intercept immigrants built for almost 70M€ and which is now sitting empty because of unforeseen judicial uncertainties. The story and Volt made it into Politico Magazine. You can read the article here:
👉 Read the article in Politico magazine

That's all for this month's newsletter.

Thank you for reading, maybe recommending Volt to someone you know and we’re looking forward to a year in which we will also make a splash in Slovenia - maybe even with your help.

See you soon
The team of Volt Slovenia