Marjan Šarec

The event featured around 1,200 participants from 60 countries, numbers that Logar said showed that it was "the largest and content-wise the strongest forum so far, exceeding the frameworks of the location in Slovenia and significantly expanding to areas in the region as well as the immediate and distant neighbourhood".

"If it's possible that I became speaker, it's possible that a certain kind of unexpected coalition could be formed which today might seem like a mission impossible," Tonin said in an interview with the STA.

Slovenian voters cast 2,473 valid general election ballots at diplomatic and consular offices abroad. The largest number of votes, 720, went to the election winner, SDS, while another right-leaning party, New Slovenia (NSi), came second with 438 votes, according to the National Electoral Commission. The left got 260 votes, followed by SD with 244 and the Modern Centre Party (SMC) with 192.

The ruling Modern Centre Party (SMC) would raise the budgetary funds for science to 1% of GDP, but did not specify in what period, whereas the non-parliamentary Marjan Šarec List (LMŠ) would also raise them to 1%, but it would do it gradually, by 2022.

Many refer to 2009 as the benchmark year, with the ministry's budget topping EUR 214m, whereas the opposition Democrats (SDS) would be happy with slightly over EUR 178m from 2008.

"Politics has not shown that it could be an authority. Some politicians can no longer behave appropriately for their positions - and authority is when you know what is appropriate and what is not," is convinced Marjan Šarec. Borut Pahor, on the other hand, believes that the problem in politics is that of honesty.

Ljudmila Novak