The Slovenia Times

Pahor, Van der Bellen to mark 100 ys of Carinthian plebiscite

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The pair had discussed marking the anniversary together already during Pahor's official visit to Vienna last June but now the programme of their visit to Klagenfurt on 10 October is mostly determined.

Following the 1920 plebiscite, a sizeable part of the Slovenian-speaking territory became Austria two years after WWI, and an estimated 50,000 ethnic Slovenians live in Austria's regions of Carinthia and Styria today.

Pahor said in Vienna today that both the programme of the ceremony and accompanying events were designed as a message of harmony between the two neighbouring nations in the European spirit.

The event would be an opportunity for both Slovenians and Austrians to reflect on the past and think about the future. The EU offers new opportunities for this area that need to be seized to create an environment of peace and understanding for future generations, he said.

According to the Austrian press agency APA, Pahor also expressed the expectation that the Austrian federal and provincial authorities would do more to support the Slovenian ethnic minority in Carinthia.

Pahor and Van der Bellen met on Tuesday evening ahead of the seventh trilateral meeting of the presidents of three neighbouring countries - Slovenia, Austria and Croatia.

Today the presidents, including Croatia's Zoran Milanović, discussed measures to mitigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, and to fight climate change.

Van der Bellen said turbulent months were behind us and ahead, and that this meeting in person was a sign that the situation was stabilising. He said the three countries had deep ties, not just economic but also personal, even family ties.

Lauding the trilateral meeting as an "important sign when it comes to Europe" and calling for a joint response, he noted that unilateral moves by individual countries at the start of the pandemic turned out to be counter-productive.

Much like Milanović, he highlighted the tourism sector, an important economic sector in all three countries, as being strongly affected by the pandemic.

In this context in particular, all three presidents called for the borders to remain open given the favourable epidemiological situation.

Pahor said that the most that people could do to keep the borders open in all three countries was to follow safety recommendations.

Van der Bellen and Milanović stressed that the coronavirus crisis would be over sooner or later while the climate crisis would not because there was no "vaccine" against it, so the fight against climate change needed a new impetus. The restoration of Europe after coronavirus is an opportunity to create a greener Europe, they agreed.

Milanović also supported the global call for a more ambitious action against climate change that had been initiated by Van der Bellen and is now supported by 37 world leaders, APA reported. Pahor's office said that the Slovenian president was among the first leaders to join the appeal in November 2018.

The next meeting of the trilateral will be held in Slovenia. The date and the place are yet to announced.

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