President Kaljulaid in two-day official visit to Slovenia
President Kersti Kaljulaid is on an official visit to Slovenia from Monday, her office reports. The main aims of the visit are to deepen ties between the two nations and to promote business links.
The president's foreign policy adviser Lauri Kuusing noted the two countries are similar in size and are both somewhat on the periphery of the EU, adding that communications between Estonia and Slovenia, which both joined the union, as well as NATO, in 2004, had up to now not been very intensive.
"At the same time, there is great potential since we are like-minded and innovative, small countries in Europe," Kuusing said.
Kersti Kaljualid is scheduled to meet her Slovenian counterpart, Borut Pahor, and the national assembly's president, Dejan Židan (Social Democrats), on Monday. She will also address the prime conference of the year, the 14th Bled Strategic Forum.
On Tuesday, she meets Prime Minister Marjan Šarec (LMŠ), gives an open lecture on the choices that have faced Estonia in recent decades, and will visit the Jožef Stefan Institute, the country's leading scientific research institute, ERR's online news in Estonian reports.
President Kaljulaid is to be accompanied on her trip by Toomas Luman, head of the Estonian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Eesti Kaubandus-Tööstuskoja), Riigikogu foreign affairs committee chair Enn Eesmaa (Centre), head of the Estonian-Slovenian parliamentary committee group Martin Repinksi (Centre), Estonian Business School chancellor Mart Habakuk, and Piret Urb from the Information System Authority (RIA).
A state visit is the highest expression of links between Estonia and any other country. As a rule, the Estonian president makes one or two such visits per year, hosting the same number. President Kaljulaid made a state visit to Portugal in spring, and hosted Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda in August.
The president last met Borut Pahor at the Three Seas Initiative in Ljubljana in June.
She returns to Estonia on Tuesday evening.
Editor: Andrew Whyte