Prime Minister Janez Janša: We will win the battle with the coronavirus with patience, unity, knowledge, wisdom and courage!

22. 3. 2020

Former Prime Minister Janez Janša (2020 - 2022)

It has been ten days since Slovenia declared an epidemic on 12 March under Article 7 of the Communicable Diseases Act due to an increase in the number of coronavirus infections. The Government of the Republic of Slovenia, led by Janez Janša, was appointed on 13 March, and ever since has been taking a number of measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus. After taking the most urgent steps to slow down and contain the coronavirus epidemic, the Government is stepping up the preparation of the first comprehensive legislative package to help the population and the economy.

The Government has been taking a number of measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus | Author Kabinet predsednika vlade

On his Twitter account, Prime Minister Janez Janša compared the coronavirus epidemic to the medieval plague and recalled the situation during the war for Slovenia. He also wrote that we would overcome this situation with patience, unity, knowledge, wisdom and courage.

Prime Minister Janez Janša's full post reads:

Dear citizens!

The coronavirus pandemic has changed the world. We hope and believe that this will not last long. Yet today it seems like Europe has returned to the Middle Ages, with cities fearing the plague, walls and toll houses at every step. Except back then they did not have the Internet. In the current situation, we can only rely on ourselves and on what we can produce by ourselves and gather from our own stock.

We are striving to address the bottlenecks in freight transport and trade, and there are problems with our citizens' return from other European capitals. But we will succeed in overcoming this.

Upon the dissolution of the SFRY, we were at war, the borders were closed, and we lost 80% of our market. However, we quickly recovered and started to rapidly close the gap behind the developed world. We succeeded because, in the critical period, we had enough patience, unity, knowledge, wisdom and courage. And it will be the same this time. Thank you for your courage.