Antenna Europe Direct Assemblea legislativa della Regione Emilia-Romagna

Concerning Slovenia

During the four days of the   European Youth Meeting, the students had worked in groups coordinated by facilitators of different nationalities, experts of the European Commission and European Parliament, who through an active and participatory approach help them create papers on the values heritage enclosed on the Human Rights Charter, such as: liberty, human rights, tolerance, equality, solidarity, citizenship, justice and so on.

I seeped through one of the work classes. My purpose being that of integrating myself to the class, taking part to their meeting, but remaining invisible at the same time. Doing the reporter in incognito it is nevertheless not an easy task, but it would had become soon possible thanks to the Greek facilitator who put me at ease with his ‘less professor’ and ‘more educator’ way of working. I will have soon had my attention particularly caught by the three Slovenian girls, who among the Belgians, Swedish, Maltese and Italians open the debate on the citizenship issue and distinguished themselves more by confusion and uncertainty. Why? I became curious about it and at the end of the works I had a short talk with Zarja R. who told me some things about its Italian ethnic minority in Slovenia.

Zarja is a simple girl with huge curious eyes, she told me she didn’t want to be recorded. She was not alone, two other girls were standing with her without saying nothing. She spoke in Italian, less in English, but she managed to make herself understood.
“Our community lives not easily, given its little number of people”. Debating with other European students on the European Union Fundamental Rights Charter is extremely important for understanding and reflecting on the perception that each of us has about these rights and values: “different perception as a result of the environment we are living in”, told me Zarja. Concerning the citizenship issue, she added: “not to feel belonging neither to Slovenia, neither to Italy, creates continuous insecurity. (…) European Union is really important, but our perceptions are different from those of the other countries, especially from the North part ones”.

How could I not agree with her? After Slovenia’s independency from Yugoslavia in 1991, the Italian autochthonic minority obtained indeed the right to bilingual education, but that was not to be enough for making the people feel fully Italian, not to say European. Slovenia’s entry in the EU in 2004, has further increased the difficulties as with accepting the Euro as common European currency and consequently with the economic crisis, the prices increased and the financing for schools, European projects for youth have not been arriving anymore. Even if the bilingual school is part of the Italian scholastic system, keeps its particularity as being bound to the ethnic-linguistic origins if the Italian/Slovenian minority.

“Participating to the meeting and exchanging ideas and curiosities makes me feel an European citizen more than other thing”, witnessed Zarja.  You get to find out so many things about other countries which you don’t have the chance to really know otherwise. Zarja explained that at the beginning the information broadcast on televisions used to arrive only in the Slovenian language, therefore proving to be incomprehensible for many of us. For this reason while the meeting, she and other groups of different European nationalities jointly and loudly asked more European information and even more justice, because unfortunately, said Zarja, “the law is not equal for everybody, corruption continues spreading, justice system is slow, the cases are carried on for too long time…and that in all this there is so much similarity to Italy”, she laughed sarcastically.

Zarja told me afterwards that after this experience, once arrived back home to Slovenia, they will make a little newspaper for their school in order to spread information on the Meeting, but especially to bring awareness about the European values also among the other students and to bring Europe closer to them, there where it seems that it has not yet totally arrived. Saying her good-bye I asked her one more thing, if there was some funny event in all this European days, she answered me that some girls, listening to her strange Italian asked her where was she coming from, Zarja answered “Izola”
at which the girls’ reaction was “ Och, one of the new Italian provinces?”
“D’ho!”

Elena Muscas

Translated by Paula Benea