The New York-based NGO dedicated to the expansion of democracy, Freedom House, has ranked Slovenia the best in democracy and freedom among 29 countries in transition from Central Europe to Eurasia. The report gave Slovenia an overall score of 1.89 on a scale from one to seven, with one being the best.
Slovenia did the worst in corruption and independent media, where it got 2.25, while it got the best score (1.5) in electoral process and local democratic governance. Apart from that, the report gave Slovenia 1.75 for judicial framework and independence and 2.0 for both national democratic governance and civil society.
Slovenia's grade in independent media has decreased somewhat in the 2006-2008, but has persisted at the current level ever since. The corruption was the worst in 2009-2011 period (2.5), according to the report. The overall score was never above 2.0, while it improved from 1.93 to 1.89 last year.
Slovenia is barely mentioned in the report covering last year. Freedom House only mentions the protests from the late 2012 and early 2013 that were caused by "allegations of corruption against senior politicians and an unpopular austerity package".
"While freedoms of assembly and expression were generally respected, some of the protests turned violent. In February 2013, the government collapsed for the second time in less than two years due to unrest over austerity measures," the report writes.
Countries like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (score of 6.93), Belarus (6.71) and Russia (6.21), are at the tail of the list, while Slovenia's neighbours Croatia and Hungary got 3.61 and 2.89, respectively.
Among countries from the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo fared the worst (5.25), followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina (4.39), Macedonia (3.93), Montenegro (3.82) and Serbia (3.64).
In second place behind Slovenia among transition countries is Estonia (1.96), followed by Latvia (2.07) and the Czech Republic (2.14).
Source: Slovenia Times
