Newsletter - September 2025
Our monthly newsletter with news from Volt Slovenia, across Europe and our web comic.
Welcome to our monthly Volt Slovenia newsletter (subscribe here)
If you thought you could spend a few weeks on the beach in Croatia (if you got there), while the world was on summer break, you were wrong.
Europe is on fire - not only literally in Spain and France where European cooperation means many countries sending equipment - but also on a geopolitical level, where the EU did not give the impression to be calling any shots but rather has to swallow one bullet after another.
This meant our team was also busy, coordinating with other chapters and continuing to collect signatures. As summer is slowly losing steam and everyone returns to work, we are also picking up where we left, because elections are approaching and there is a lot to do if we want to present Volt as an alternative that may merit your vote.
If you want to help, now is a good time to join:
This month’s topics
What’s happening with Volt in Slovenia?
Monthly Meetups in Ljubljana and Koper
Participating in the Bled Strategic Forum
Signature Collection #4
News from Europe
After the deal is before the deal?
Peace in Ukraine? With or without the US?
ChatControl will soon scan our private conversations
France government facing motion of confidence over budget
Updates from Volt around Europe
Volt Portugal local elections
Volt Nederland polling at 3 seats
Volt Czechia national elections
💡 Minis discover Europe
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What’s Happening with Volt Slovenia
Monthly Meetup in Ljubljana and Koper
Full house in Ljubljana
Albeit the summer holidays, we fit two Meet&Greets into August as we try to launch our second team in Koper and were happy to welcome some of our expat members visiting Slovenia.
We discussed the upcoming month, brainstormed the electoral campaign next year and how we can reach the 200 signatures required to register.
It was great seeing new faces and we’re looking forward to growing our Meet+Greet further in the months to come, ideally also launching other city teams
Participating in the Bled Strategic Forum
Discussing EU identity in Bled
Europe is at a crossroads and this year’s 20th Bled Strategic Forum dedicated its full two days on how Europe can find its geopolitical role in a changing world and what it means for the central and southeastern European member states and countries seeking to join the European Union.
Although Volt Slovenia is not yet a registered political party, we also managed to receive an invitation and spent the two days in Bled building our future network both within Slovenia and beyond.
Our principal message was that we should not underestimate the role Slovenia and other smaller EU member states can play in shaping the future of the European Union.
👉 Check out the agenda
👉 Rewatch sessions on Youtube
Signature Collection #4
It's the holiday season and this usually means one thing: the queue at Upvrana Enota is shorter compared to other months, but also not easy to find new signatories. We have over 40 signatures now and want to quickly hit 50.
If you’d like to help, you can certify your signature at the administrative office in just 5 minutes and send it to us.
If you’re in Ljubljana - let us know! We’ll gladly invite you for a coffee (or something stronger 😉)
How can you sign?
We’ve prepared clear and simple IKEA-style instructions for everyone.
What does signing to found the party mean?
You’ll be able to vote for the party leadership and approve the statutes and programme at the founding assembly.
After registration, everyone’s welcome to become full members via Volt.team—but it’s not mandatory. Even if you don’t want to join, you can still help register Volt Slovenia with a single signature. It’s completely fine to leave it at that.
👉 More info and FAQs on our website about signatures
News from Europe
After the deal is before the deal?
Photo: Donald Trump on Truth Social
If you thought the EU-US trade deal was bad, we might not have seen the end of it. It seems whenever something does not please the US president, we put everything back on the table.
The recent discussion on European digital protection (Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act) caused the US president to again threaten new tariffs should US tech companies not get preferential treatment.
We seriously wonder how long EU leadership is kowtowing to the US president. The September state of the European Union (SOTEU) address by Commission president Ursula von der Leyen better show how the EU will reduce its dependence from both the US and China in the near term with concrete steps. If not we need a new European and national leadership.
👉 Read our MEP's Reinier van Lanschot’s statement on the new tariff threats
Peace in Ukraine? With or without the US?
Photo: to appease or to make peace (Photo Georgia Today)
Last month also saw a full plane of EU leaders plus the UK, plus NATO make the trip to the US to support Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky meeting with Donald Trump.
This was after the Alaska meeting of Trump and Putin a week earlier. The result of this show of force however did not bring any breakthroughs and the European coalition consoled itself that at least things did not turn for the worst.
What does this mean for Ukraine as the country was commemorating its independence day on August 24th:
There is no clear pathway to an end of the war.
US support depends on the US president’s whims and fancies
Europe needs to speed up its efforts to create a credible military deterrent and how to support Ukraine in case the US stops its support
Chat Control will soon scan our private conversations
Photo: Chat Control support across Europe (Patrick Breyer)
The Chat Control 2.0 initiative was introduced by the European Commission in 2022 and if Germany stops opposing the initiative, a qualified majority would be reached for an October vote.
What does Chat Control mean? It means all private digital conversation whether on Facebook, Whatsapp or per mail as well as all digitally stored files will be scanned in real-time for CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material).
The regulation goes against the European Union charta of human rights article 7 and 8 but like with the US-EU data transfer agreements, once in place, it will take a few years to declare it illegal again and until then, we will likely hand over our most sensitive private conversations to large US companies to be scanned and train AI models.
👉 More information on the topic on the website of former Pirate MEP Patrick Breyer - https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/
👉 Post on the blog of our Sven Franck on Chat Control - https://svenfranck.eu/en/blog/Chat-Control-the-end-of-the-secrecy-of-correspondence.html
France government facing motion of confidence over budget
Photo: Trouble in France for Prime Minister Francois Bayrou (AFP)
The French Prime Minister announced a vote of no-confidence for September 8th over the French fiscal budget. The country will soon overtake Greece as the most indebted EU member state and with an annual debt to GDP ratio of over 6%, it is far away from the 3% hurdle for all EU member states.
The French budget thus foresees cost cuts of over 40B€ including removing two national holidays, which of course did not go over well during the summer. With nationwide protests and a general strike announced for September 10th, the Prime Minister went into the offensive, announcing a motion of confidence.
Whether this means a new government or yet again new elections less than 2 years before the new presidential elections will be up to President Macron. In any case, the vote brings new instability to a country looking for ways to manage its growing state budget.
News from other Volt chapters
Volt Portugal local elections
Volt Portugal running across the country
Portugal seems to have elections all the time and our team is not getting tired. On October 12th, municipal elections will take place and our team has been preparing for these for many months.
👉 You can follow the Portuguese team on Instagram as they try to become the next chapter to build a solid base of local elected representatives - https://www.instagram.com/voltportugal/?hl=en
Volt Nederland polling at 3 seats
Photo: Europe Elects has Volt Nederland at 3 seats (Europe Elects)
The Netherlands are also heading to snap elections on October 29th after the conservative-extreme-right coalition broke last month. Currently our Volt Nederland team is polling at 3 seats - the same level as in the last 2023 elections.
The team has published its programme - which was developed with members from across Volt Europa and has also validated their preliminary candidate list.
👉 Follow Volt Nederland on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/voltnederland/
👉 Check out the candidate running for Dutch Tweete Kammer - https://voltnederland.org/mensen/advieslijst-kandidaten-tweede-kamerverkiezingen-2025
Volt Czechia national elections
Photo: Press conference of the lead candidates (Volt Czechia)
Closer to us, Volt Czechia is also preparing for national elections on October 3rd and 4th. The Czech team is still small but managed to gather the 200 candidates necessary to run across the country.
Volt is garnering some notoriety for filing a lawsuit against two “non-coalition” lists who created new parties in order to circumvent the higher electoral threshold for coalitions - a claim also supported by academia.
👉 Likewise, to stay up to date, you can follow Volt Czechia on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/voltczechia/
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!
Recommend the newsletter to friends who might be interested in Volt – and catch up again next month.
The Volt Slovenia Team