Newsletter - May 2025

Welcome to our monthly Volt Slovenia newsletter (subscribe here)

May is upon us and it will be a European month. Not only is there Eurovision on May 17th - we’ll be rooting for Klemen of course, but more importantly, May 9th is Europe Day - the day the Schuman declaration - laying out the cooperation across Europe was published in 1950. It’s a day to celebrate peace and unity in Europe.

Considering the world today however, we believe that only “celebrating” alone is not enough. We actually have to get busy to strengthen European unity and to preserve peace and stability across the continent. Why not with Volt?

👉 Join us

Topics:

What’s happening in Volt Slovenia?

• Monthly meetup in Ljubljana - elections anyone?

• Help us get the party started (4/200)

• First time protesting

• Look: Borja already got elected!

News from Europe

• Trade and tariff turmoil

• LePen ineligible for French presidential elections?

News from other chapters

• Results of the Vienna elections in Austria

• Volt Ireland is preparing to register as a party

• European Defense and AI in Czechia

• Final campaign weeks in Portugal

💡 Minis discover Europe

What's happening in Volt Slovenia

Monthly meetup in Ljubljana - elections anyone?

Photo: Masterplanners masterplanning

We wrapped up the month with our Ljubljana meetup discussing signature collection and next year’s elections. A year is not a lot of time to prepare, so we’re stepping up the pace to get the party started. Beginning of May we will organise our first campaign retreat in Velenje to brainstorm strategy and how to make noise and a splash at the ballot box with our still modest means.

👉 If you’re creative and want to help, join and become a member of Volt Slovenia

Help us get the party started (4/200)

Photo: Matic with signature #002

To register Volt as a political party we require the signatures of 200 founding members. We started signing ourselves and will recruit family and friends, but to reach 200 before the summer holidays, we’d be happy for any support we can get.

What does it mean to be a founding member? 

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

• We submit in the decisions of the General Assembly and the signatures to register Volt Slovenia as political party

• Then we ask everyone to become an ordinary member by signing up on Volt.team - there is no obligation, so if you do not want to, you will have only helped us register Volt Slovenija with your signature.

👉 If you want to help us with your signature, we have setup a page with instructions

First time protesting

Photo: Tilen and Sven joining the Canal C0 protest

Last month we took to the streets for the first time - albeit small in numbers and not yet sporting our purple flags - to join the protest against the Canal C0 in front of the Ljubljana town hall.

If you have been following us, you should be aware of the project and its potential implications on the drinking water aquifer supplying Ljubljana and the surrounding communities. You can look at the United States and faucets leaking methane from hydraulic fracking for natural gas to see what can happen if environmental impact studies are not done. Sustainable living conditions in Ljubljana will be one of our topics in the municipal elections, so we will also try to make our voices heard on future protests against lackadaisical efforts in projects like these. 

Look, Borja already got elected!

Photo: Borja getting elected to the Erasmus Internationale student association

One of our active members is Borja Ranzinger. Currently studying economics in Rotterdam, he ran for the Erasmus International student representation at Rotterdam University. 

University is a microcosm of society and with a far-right government in power in the Netherlands, academia, like in the United States, is faced with budget cuts and tuition fee increases for international students. Add to this the unaffordable housing prices for students - you can just replace Rotterdam with Ljubljana - and there was enough motivation for Borja to become active and run as a student representative at only 18 years of age.

If you believe we also have our work cut out for us here, join us and let’s also work to support the Erasmus programme and student representation in general here in Slovenia. 

👉 Become a member of Volt Slovenia

News from Europe

Trade and tariff turmoil

European Union as a country (Photo: Aljazeera)

Ever since “Liberation day” and US President Donald Trump slapping tariffs on countries around the world, the US and wider global economy has been in rollercoaster mode. Especially the (as of writing) 145% of tariffs products from China are already causing freight from China to the US to shrink significantly. For US citizens this means eventually facing empty shelves while the international community needs to acknowledge that the US is giving up its status as global economic anchor. 

It goes further: from terminating the USAID programme to unfunding Radio Free Europe - one would think, the European Union should step up and fill the voids left on the geopolitical stage. We are not there yet it seems...

👉 Read more about where the f… is Europe from our Sven Franck

LePen ineligible for French presidential elections?

Embezzle no more (Photo: picture-alliance/dpa)

Last month also saw French presidential candidate Marine LePen being sentenced to a four years in prison (half as house arrest with electronic bracelet and half on probation) as well as five years of ineligibility for public offices preventing her from running in the 2027 French presidential elections.

LePen and over 20 other former and current elected officials of her party were found guilty of embezzling millions of euros during their time in the European Parliament by financing her party with the public funds destined for work in the European Parliament. 

Contrary to past statements of LePen that anyone convicted of a serious crime should be barred for life from public office, LePen and her movement now claim to be treated unfairly by the courts and are appealing the verdict. Such is life. Not only in Slovenia.

👉 Read the constitutional blog for an objective analysis of the verdict and its implications

News from other Volt chapters

Welcome, Mr. President!

Photo: Poff.ee

Volt Europa was very happy to announce a few days ago that Toomas Hendrik Ilves, president of Estonia from 2006-2016 has joined Volt. As president, he was responsible for bringing Estonia into the European Union and also launched the E-Estonia digital government many EU member states today are inspired by. 

In his words: I have broken with my promise to avoid all party politics and have opted to join Volt, a party that today is still small yet to my mind stands for all of what I believe is vitally needed for Europe to make it through the multiple existential crises we face today. To join a political party means you share its values. I share the values embodied in Volt.

👉 If you want to learn more about our newest member, check out the documentary “Rebel with a bowtie”

Volt Ireland is preparing to register as a party

Photo: Volt Ireland

Volt Ireland had their relaunch event to begin preparations for registering as a political party. With a recent surge in membership, the team began to reorganize and is now working to tick all the boxes for Volt Ireland to become a registered political party.

With close to 50 active members, local groups in Dublin, Cork and Galway and functional teams picking up work, we hope to hear more good news from Ireland very soon.

European Defense and AI in Czechia

Photo: Volt Czechia

On April 30th, Volt Czechia organised an international expert discussion about European Defense and Artificial Intelligence. 

The panelists included Valeriya Izhyk, EU Policy Officer for Ukraine Reconstruction, Jan Schneider, DG - Regional development and Housing policies at the Czech Ministry of regional development and Mikuláš Peksa, former MEP and is currently the policy co-lead of Volt Czechia and CEO and Founder of Cybermindnet.
👉  If you are interested how European nations can meet the challenges of developing defense and dual use technologies, you can rewatch the event in English on Youtube.

Final campaign push in Portugal

Photo: Volt Portugal

The Volt Portugal team is in the last weeks of their national election campaign running with candidates in all but one district. Key topics for Volt Portugal are European defense, affordable housing and making health services more accessible. With their billboards questioning the results of strategic voting, our Portuguese team is certainly catching a lot of eyeballs and attention.

Voters will head to the polls on May 18th and we have Volters from across Europa helping out in Lisbon in a real paneuropean campaign.

👉  If you want to support Volt Portugal, we’re playing campaign Bingo. You can play too.

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