Newsletter - June 2025

Welcome to our monthly Volt Slovenia newsletter (subscribe here)

While we could frown and sit through too many rainy days waiting for summer, we’re doing the opposite: we’re launching Volt Slovenija to establish for next year’s elections - a lot could be done to improve life in Slovenia and Europe.

We don’t want to stand on the sidelines and only vote for bad alternatives. We want to have a choice and vote for something and someone we believe in and trust . Do you feel the same? Keep on reading!

👉 Join us

Topics:

What’s happening in Volt Slovenia?

• Strategizing on our team meeting in Velenje

• Signatures - help us register

• Monthly meetup in Ljubljana

• Conference on EU enlargement

News from Europe

• Relief after the Romanian presidential runoff

• Another nail-biter in the Polish presidential elections

• My voice, my choice ECI collects 1M signatures

News from other chapters

• Volt Eesti on the Latitude59 startup conference

• Volt Italy collects signatures for same-sex marriages 

• Volt Germany elects a new board - with Slovenian participation

💡 Minis discover Europe

What's happening in Volt Slovenia

Strategizing on our team meeting in Velenje 

We were very happy to organise our first strategy meeting in Velenje - also the first time many of us managed to meet in person - and spent a day discussing political priorities, preparations for launching Volt Slovenija and the months ahead until the summer holidays. We parted with a packed todo list, so stay tuned for things to come. 

Launching a party is an adventure (not only bureaucratically) and an election is always a chance and get somewhere quickly. The next months will be rollercoaster ride and if you ever considered joining a political movement, now is a good time:

👉 Join and become a member of Volt Slovenia

Signatures - help us register

Photo: How to sign. Ikea-style

To register Volt as a political party we require the signatures of 200 founding members. We’re over 20 signatures with many on the way, but we need your support to go further. 

How can you sign? We got creative and now have a proper IKEA instruction (no screws are missing).

What does it mean to sign to found a party?

• You will be able to vote for the initial party leadership and adopt our Statutes and Programme on the inaugural General Assembly. 

• After registration, we ask everyone to become an ordinary member by signing up on Volt.team - you don’t have to, so if you do not want to, you will have only helped us register Volt Slovenija with your signature.

👉 You can find more information and an FAQ on our signature website

Monthly meetup in Ljubljana

Photo: Enjoying the sun and discussing slovenian politics

At the end of the month, we met at Sax Pub in Ljubljana for our regular Meet&Greet to talk about signature collection, upcoming projects and local activities. We’re eager to try and launch a podcast and begin organising first events on European topics. Stay tuned for more.

👉 Our local team is growing and we have a lot of ideas. Meet and discuss with us at our next monthly meeting or if you can’t wait, find our flag on the Ljubljana pride 🌈 on June 14th and say hello.

Conference on gradual EU enlargement

Photo: Talking EU enlargement on the Balkans

In case you missed it, the Think Europe thinktank together with the Erste Foundation organised a conference at Jable castle on EU gradual enlargement with a special focus on the Balkans. The idea is to not require decades of reform to become an EU member but to have a step by step process instead of gradually integrating countries as they progress with necessary reforms.

This is also one of Volt Europa’s proposals, so we were happy to meet like-minded participants and in the follow-up discussion asked the question why the European Union was not stepping in the gap left by the United States abandoning the USAid programme and replacing it with … EUAid, since it was such an important tool of not only democratic development aid, but also soft power beyond the EU’s border. “Not enough budget” to fund all activities was the answer from the European Commission representative. Something we should change.

👉 More information on the conference on the event website.

👉 More info on the Think Tank “Evrope misli” on Linkedin.

News from Europe

Relief after the Romanian presidential runoff

Europe dodged a bullet (c) Daniel Mihailescu/AFP via Getty Images)

Last month was full of drama with regards to elections. Romanians were asked to vote in the runoff presidential elections with the choice between the liberal and pro-european Nicușor Dan and the extreme-right George Simion. The polls were very close for a long time before Nicușor Dan eventually secured victory and prevented another country turning anti-european. 

There is a lot to do however as almost half of voters voiced their displeasure with the current political class and Romanians abroad also voted for the extreme-right candidate, showing that we also have a long way to go with regards to integration.

👉 To deepdive into Romanian politics and foreign interference, the blog of Angelo George is a good start 

👉 The voting results for the diaspora are shown on reddit

Another nail-biter in the Polish presidential elections

Leszek Szymanski/EPA-EFE - the new polish President Karol Nawrocki

Even closer were the Polish presidential elections with the runoff pitching Rafał Trzaskowski from the camp of Donal Tusk’s civic platform against Karol Nawrocki from the former PiS ruling party. The election was critical as the incumbent president and PiS member Andrzej Duda was blocking many of the ruling government's reforms.

And just as Europe thought it had a lucky streak, Nawrocki won the runoff with a narrow margin of 50.89% to 49.11%. This will mean that Poland will continue to have key reforms of its democratic 9 point action plan blocked by the President’s veto - meaning the European Commission unblocked 137B€ of funding for Poland last year without the country actually being able to fix the underlying causes for which these funds were being withheld.

👉 See Euronews for more info about the unblocked EU funds

My voice, my choice ECI collects 1M signatures

My voice my choice website banner

In case you missed it, the Slovenian-based My Voice, My Choice European Citizen Initiative was about 250 000 signatures short a few days before the deadline to collect 1M signatures and put the initiative on the European Commission’s agenda.

But then citizens across the EU mobilised and with every hour, the initiative came closer and eventually surpassed the threshold collecting almost 1.2 million signatures. It shows that citizens can mobilise for important topics and photo finishes.

The initiative for safe and free abortion now has to pass through the Commission and Parliament in the coming months.

👉 You can see the final tally per country on the ECI portal.

👉 To stay up to date with the next steps, follow the MyVoice MyChoice association.

News from other Volt chapters

Volt Eesti on the Latitude59 startup conference

Photo: Volt @Latitude59

Last month was the first official showing of Volt Eesti at the Latitude59 startup conference. Our MEP Damian Boeselager and former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves gave the inauguration speech for the conference.

They were explaining why Europe needs a united and integrated capital market for our startups to have access to more funding possibilities and larger markets. This is true in Estonia just as much as in Slovenia. Only through integration we can compete with technologies coming out of the United States and China.

👉  You can watch the opening panel on Youtube.

Volt Italy collects signatures for same-sex marriages

Photo: Uguali! or “Equality”

With their Uguali platform, Volt Italy is trying to collect 500 000 signatures to launch a referendum to repeal the distinction between the institution of civil unions and civil marriage, de facto extending access to civil marriage and adoptions to couples formed by persons of the same sex.

The campaign collected over 350.000 signatures in the first weeks alone. There is a three month window to collect the required signatures after which a referendum would be scheduled. 

👉 Our MEP Reinier van Lanschot explains what the initiative is about.

👉 To keep track of signatures, follow the government website.

Volt Germany elects a new board - with Slovenian participation

Photo: Volt Germany

Last week, Volt Germany, which has grown to over 10 000 members during the last month, elected their new board. In a first, the new board is led by a female / diverse co-presidents with Luca Loreeen Kraft and Alast Mojtahed Najafi getting the majority of votes to lead our German chapter for the next two years.

From a Slovenian standpoint, we are happy that Victoria Fridau from Maribor was elected deputy chairwoman and we’re looking forward to hopefully working closer with Volt Germany in the months to come.

Minis discover Europe

As usual, we finish with the adventures of Hedge and the Professor as they explore the European Institutions - our monthly comic by Izar Lunaček. You can find the previous episodes on Volt Slovenia’s website.

Thank you for reading, please recommend our newsletter to friends that might be interested in Volt and see you again in a month.

The team
from Volt Slovenia