Why Italy and the EU are wrong to underestimate Slovenia
Little is said about Slovenia, and it is a mistake: it is a country with many positive economic indicators, endowed with a robust industrial capacity. The deepening of Alessandro Napoli
Just fifteen minutes separate the Italian city of Trieste from its once turbulent eastern border, now finally more peaceful. Gorizia and Nova Gorica, in addition to having similar names, shared a dividing wall up to a couple of decades ago, a sort of mini Berlin Wall, albeit much less massive and scary. Then that wall came down with Slovenia's entry into the EU and then into the Schengen area, the cities embraced each other again, in 2025 they will together be European capitals of culture and Trieste too has moved closer to its painful border. One hundred kilometers passable on a comfortable and modern highway divide it (today we could say bring it closer) to the Slovenian capital Ljubljana.
Yet little is known about this neighbor, who appeared on the European scene after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, net of tourist curiosities. So let's take the opportunity to look at it (and tell it) more closely.
SLOVENIA: A COUNTRY WELL POSITIONED IN THE EUROPEAN AVERAGES
Slovenians, at least those who reside in Slovenia, are just over two million. They live in a prosperous country, in 58th place in the world in terms of GDP per capita ($34,100), slightly below that of the Czech Republic and not far from that of Italy, but definitely above those of Portugal and Greece ). Are you among those who turn up their noses when GDP is used to measure the well-being of a country? Well, if you look at the value of the Human Development Index, Slovenia's position in the international ranking is even in the leading group, twenty-first. Ethnically compact, with an Italian-speaking minority on Primorska (the Littoral) and a Magyar-speaking minority beyond the walls, it is also a young country, which achieved independence only in 1991 by breaking away from the Federative Republic of Yugoslavia with a painless "war" that lasted only ten days : the small and compact territorial defense against the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA).
Having become independent, Slovenia is very attached to its identity as an Alpine country: Slovenians compare themselves to Swiss and Austrians, not to other neighbors such as Croatians and Italians. Switzerland and Austria are their benchmarks . For centuries, Slovenians didn't even seriously think they were Slovenians. "With the authorities and in the cities we spoke German, in the village and at home what we called a dialect", say the old people who keep the memory of times gone by or who picked up the memory from their fathers and grandfathers. The priest celebrated the mass in Latin and the homily in "dialect". Italians and Croatians continue to joke about it: "Those are Germans who speak a Slavic language".
Slavic-speaking "Germans".
On the other hand, until the First World War, national identity was rebuilt in the countryside, because the city where the largest number of Slovenians were concentrated was not in historical Slovenia: it was Trieste. There were no real “cities” in historical Slovenia. After the end of the First World War, joining the new "Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes" was not a pan-Slavic leap of faith, but the search for a new umbrella of protection from the "irredentists" and "Freemasons without God” (that is, by the Italians), since that of the Hapsburg empire had failed.
Ljubljana is the capital. A small capital (just under 290,000 inhabitants), efficient and – as they say today – eco-friendly . In a few kilometers you are outside the centre, the woods and paths begin, where Slovenians of all ages flock on Sundays and in summer, obsessed with having to practice sports. Who then stop to eat in open-air restaurants, an authentic passion of the average Slovenian. But in the midst of the more rural landscape, among woods and cornfields that seem combed like a most accurate coiffure , among the villages and country parish churches, when you least expect it, industrial sheds appear.
INDUSTRY STRONG POINT
Industry has been and remains a strong point of this country and contributes to forming 32% of the added value. As the country loosened ties with the rest of the South Slavic world, the industry transformed, innovated and internationalised. This is, for example, the story of Tomos , an old factory of motorcycles and cars under license based in Capodistria and gradually privatized, leader in the motorized two-wheeler market in the Netherlands and well known in the USA. But it is also the story of Elan of Begunje, skis, snowboards and sailboats, the first in Europe to have used fiberglass, both for skis and boats. There is often a lot of research and development behind the successes of these companies. Research and development made in Slovenia , among meadows, fields and villages before the capital.
THE CASE OF THE MULTINATIONAL GORENJE
But in the industrial field the most striking success story remains that of Gorenje, a multinational of unexpected size for such a small country. Gorenje produces white goods. At the time of samoupravljanje (self-management), that is when that country then called Yugoslavia tried to experiment with a model of socialism different from the Soviet state capitalism, Gorenje was just a large factory that produced household appliances. Point. Gorenje today would be unrecognizable by those who knew it in those days. It has acquired companies and factories in many parts of the world, it has developed and applied absolutely innovative, energy saving and environmentally friendly technologies and above all it has focused on industrial design, another Slovenian bump: the collaboration with Pininfarina is strategic.
Mercator (hypermarkets) is also a Slovenian multinational very popular with the general public in South-Eastern Europe. It can be said to be to South-Eastern Europe what Carrefour is to France or Tesco to the UK. The majority of the shares are now in the hands of the Croatian Agrokor, but the "head" remains in Ljubljana.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/slovenia-industria-indicatori-economici/ on Sat, 25 Feb 2023 06:29:05 +0000.