Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob suffered an unexpected blow in parliament after the two smaller parties in the ruling coalition joined forces with the conservative opposition and supported a proposal for a consultative referendum on increasing defense spending, the news site “Slovenia Times“ reported, BTA reported.
The referendum proposal was submitted by the "Left" party, which is part of the government but opposes higher defense spending and is against Slovenia's NATO membership.
In early June, parliament adopted a declaration stipulating that defense spending would increase to 2 percent of GDP this year and to 3 percent of GDP by 2030.
The question that will be asked of voters will be whether they support the proposal for Slovenia to increase defense spending to reach 3 percent of GDP annually by 2030, which is approximately 2.1 billion euros.
The ruling coalition is under serious pressure over the issue of defense spending, as the "Left" and the Social Democrats, the other junior coalition partner, have expressed concerns that this would affect social spending.
Tensions appeared to have eased early last week when the three parties in the ruling coalition agreed to stick to the 3 percent of GDP commitment while postponing NATO's higher target of increasing defense spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035.
However, the July 4 vote deepened the division again, helped by the right-wing Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) and New Slovenia, which are not against higher defense spending but saw the vote as an opportunity to undermine the ruling coalition.
Prime Minister Golob's Freedom Movement has tried to deal with the situation by proposing its own consultative referendum on the country's NATO membership. The proposal will be formally submitted this week. "This is the real question that citizens should decide on," the party said.
"There are only two ways: either we stay in NATO and pay our membership fees, or we leave the alliance. Everything else is a populist deception of the citizens of Slovenia," Golob was quoted as saying on the government's official profile in Exeter.
Consultative referendums are not binding, but they carry political weight, and the vote was presented by the opposition as a chance to hold a much-needed security debate, as well as an opportunity to hold the government accountable.
Slovenian Democratic Party leader Janez Janša admitted that the referendum could not actually be won, which is why he suggested that voters vote with an invalid ballot and add the words "down with the incompetent government" to the ballot. He said that commitments made within NATO must be respected.