Slovenia: a role model for ’small’ nations

 Just returned from a weekend in Slovenia. A very impressive location which saw us take in the capital Ljubljana, some caves, a castle and the Slovenian coast. I would certainly want to return and see more.

The Slovenians, of course, will take on the Presidency of the EU next January and in doing so they will become the first of the EU10 to take on this role.

The thing that struck me throughout was how, with a population of barely 2 million people, they had made all this work. The country is prosperous and efficient and they have no hesitation about taking on the role of the EU presidency. Indeed it seems to me (and this was partly the purpose of my visit) they are better prepared than many of the bigger nations who have carried out this role in the past.

So with my Slovenian experience in mind it was no surprise when I read Gideon Rachman’s article in today’s FT: ‘For nations, small is beautiful’. In the article he says: ‘Look at almost any league table of national welfare and small countries dominate. The IMF’s ranking of countries by GDP per capita shows that four of the five richest countries in the world have populations of less than 5m.’ And he goes on to show how small countries dominate other indices in health, law and order, competitiveness and so on.

All of which confirms my view that the regions of England, at least those that want it, should be taking on a greater role for the provision of services. Yorkshire with a population of 5m  could potentially fit into the model of small, yet prosperous nations. However, I am not advocating independence but a greater say over such things as transport is surely not unreasonable, especially in the wake of the report The Northern Economy in the Next Decade from the policy think-tank ippr north published last week. Its conclusions are very interesting, not least when they say they believe that there is a bias against the North compared to the English average in terms of the amount of public spending on transport per head of population. Overall, they estimate the figure to be £30 billion pounds. The people in Yorkshire should be angry about this and indeed I was pleased to see the Yorkshire Post carry this as their main page one story the day after the report was published. The point needs to be made that things can and should be different. Suddenly the Slovenian way of doing things looks very seductive.