Ivan Janša (; born 17 September 1958), better known as Janez Janša (), is a Slovenian politician who has served as Prime Minister of Slovenia since 2026, a position he previously held from 2004 to 2008, from 2012 to 2013 and from 2020 to 2022. Since 1993, Janša has led the Slovenian Democratic Party, which has emerged as the pre-eminent Slovenian right-wing party.
Janša served as a minister of defence from 1990 to 1994, a post he had also held during the Slovenian War of Independence. He has also served as a prime minister from 2004 to 2008, and again became prime minister in 2012, following an early election in December 2011. On 27 February 2013, Janša's second government was ousted in a vote of non-confidence. In June 2013, Janša was sentenced to two years in prison on corruption charges. The ruling was confirmed by Slovenia's higher court in April 2014, but after the Constitutional Court of Slovenia ordered a retrial for procedural reasons, the case later expired. Despite his party winning a plurality of votes in the 2018 Slovenian parliamentary election, Janša was initially passed over as a prime minister candidate as most parties refused to join a Janša-led government because of Janša's right wing views. After spending years in opposition, Janša was selected as prime minister-designate in March 2020 following the resignation of prime minister Marjan Šarec. His third term as a prime minister ended on 13 May 2022.
A communist in his youth, Janša's political stance has drifted rightward during the course of his political career, from a liberal, pro-democracy dissident under communist rule, to a social democrat politician, and to a right-wing national conservative. Janša was a close ally of Hungary's former prime minister Viktor Orbán, although he disagreed with him on several points; Janša has repeatedly expressed support for Ukraine in the war against the Russian invasion in 2022, and also supports sanctions against Russia and increased military aid to Ukraine. Although Janša was also critical of European integration, as Prime Minister he respected European agreements and supported the enlargement of the European Union. His party also remained a member of the centre-right group of the European People's Party.
Youth and education Janša was born to a Roman Catholic working-class family of Grosuplje. He was called Janez (a version of the name Ivan; both are John in English) since childhood. His father was a member of the Slovene Home Guard, who were aligned with Nazi Germany, from Dobrova near Ljubljana who had escaped communist retaliation due to his young age.Janez Janša, Okopi (Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1994)
Janša graduated from the Faculty of Sociology, Political Science, and Journalism of the University of Ljubljana with a degree in Defence Studies in 1982, and became employed in the Defence Secretariate of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia.
In 1975, aged 17, Janša joined the League of Communists, and became one of the leaders of its youth wing. He became president of the Committee for Basic People's Defence and Social Self-Protection of the (ZSMS). Janša was expelled from the party in 1983 after breaking with Yugoslav military orthodoxy by criticizing the system of people's self-defense from a radical left perspective. Janša appealed his ouster, but his appeal was denied. Despite the ejection, Janša touted his work in the party in a resume while applying for a job as a newspaper editor in 1985.
Dissident In 1983, Janša wrote the first of his dissident articles about the nature of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA). In the late 1980s, as Slovenia was introducing democratic reforms and gradually lifting restrictions on freedom of speech, Janša wrote several articles criticising the Yugoslav People's Army in Mladina magazine (published by the League of Socialist Youth of Slovenia). As a result, his re-election as president of the Committee was blocked in 1984, and in 1985 his passport was withdrawn. During this period, Janša and his associates were held under closer watch by the Yugoslav secret police. Janša was also barred from gaining employment in any state institution or state-owned company. Between 1985 and 1986, he made over 250 job applications without success despite meeting all qualifications. He was also unable to publish articles. During this period, he earned his living writing computer programs and as a chance mountaineering guide.
Liberalization in the succeeding years allowed him to get work as secretary of the Journal for the Criticism of Science in 1986, and, a year later, to again begin publishing in Mladina. His Mladina articles consisted of critical opinion columns and articles on the topic of democracy and national sovereignty.
In the mid-1980s, Janša was employed in the Slovenian software company Mikrohit; in the years 1986 and 1987, Janša founded, together with his friend Igor Omerza (later high-ranking politician of the Slovenian Democratic Union and the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia), his own software company Mikro Ada.
He became involved in the pacifist movement, and emerged as an important activist in the network of civil society organizations in Slovenia. By the mid-1980s, he was one of the most prominent activist of the Slovenian pacifist movement.Vlasta Jalušič and Lev Kreft, eds., Vojna in mir: refleksije dvajsetih let (Ljubljana: Mirovni inštitut, 2009) Janša also became active in the nascent environmental movement.
Rapprochement with the Socialist Youth movement
In 1987, Janša was approached by the family of the late politician Stane Kavčič, who had been the most important exponent of the reformist fraction in the Slovenian Communist Party in the late 1960s, and prime minister of Slovenia between 1967 and 1972; he was asked to edit the manuscript of Kavčič's diaries.Božo Repe and Jože Prinčič, Pred časom: portret Staneta Kavčiča (Ljubljana: Modrijan 2009), 48–49 Janša edited the volume together with Igor Bavčar.Božo Repe and Jože Prinčič, Pred časom: portret Staneta Kavčiča (Ljubljana: Modrijan 2009), 49 The publication of the book was part of the political project of Niko Kavčič, former banker and prominent member of the reformist wing of the Communist Party, to establish a new Slovenian left wing political formation that would challenge the hardliners within the Communist Party.
In the spring of 1988, Janša ran for president of the , a semi-independent youth organization of the Communist Party, which had been open, since 1986, also to non-party members. In his program, Janša proposed that the organization become independent of the Communist Party and transform itself into an association of all youth and civic associations; he also proposed that it rename itself the "League of Youth Organizations and Movements", and that it assume the role of the main civil society platform in Slovenia. During that time, he also participated in the public discussions on the constitutional changes of Yugoslav and Slovenian constitution.
Arrest and trial On 31 May 1988, Janša was arrested on suspicion of possessing a classified Yugoslav military document uncovered during a search on the premises of a company where Janša was employed (a staff sergeant of the Yugoslav Army, Ivan Borštner, was arrested the same day on suspicion of leaking the document to Mladina). Along with two Mladina journalists, they were tried by a military court on charges of exposing military secrets, and given prison sentences. Janša's trial was conducted in camera, with no legal representation for the accused, and in Serbo-Croatian (the official language of the Yugoslav Army) rather than in Slovene.
Janša was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment, initially at Dob, but, following public outcry, he was transferred to the open prison in Ig. The case became known as the JBTZ affair and triggered mass protests against the government, and accelerated the process of democratization, known as the Slovenian Spring. The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights was formed following Janša's arrest, which became the largest grassroots civil society organization in Slovenia, gaining over 100,000 members within weeks.
Janša later accused Milan Kučan, the then-leader of SR Slovenia, of having accepted the Yugoslav Army's request for the arrest.Janez Janša, Okopi (Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1995). Kučan, under pressure from the Yugoslav federal authorities, did in fact acquiesce to the searches that led to the subsequent arrests. Niko Kavčič, who was at that time considered Janša's political mentor, believed the arrest was organized by the hardliners within the Slovenian Communist Party who were angered by the publication of Stane Kavčič's diaries and wanted to prevent the formation of an alternative reformist movement.
The philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who at the time also worked as a columnist for Mladina, suggested that Janša was arrested because of his critical articles on the Yugoslav Army, and because the army wanted to prevent his election as president of the League of the Socialist Youth of Slovenia.Slavoj Žižek, Druga smrt Josipa Broza Tita (Ljubljana: DZS, 1989). As a consequence of his arrest, he could not run for the position; nevertheless, the leadership of the organization decided to carry on with the elections despite Janša's arrest. In June 1988, Jožef Školč was elected as president of the League instead of Janša.
As a protest against the League of the Socialist Youth of Slovenia's decision not to postpone the elections, Janša broke all relations with the organization. Janša was released after serving about six months of sentence, and became editor-in-chief of the Slovene political weekly magazine Demokracija (Democracy) shortly after his release, a position he held until May 1990, having been elected to parliament the previous month.
Political career 1990–1994: Foray into politics, minister of defence
In 1989, Janša was involved in the founding of one of the first opposition parties in Slovenia, the Slovenian Democratic Union (SDZ) and became its first vice-president, and later president of the Party Council. Following the first free elections in May 1990, he became the minister of defence in Lojze Peterle's cabinet, a position he held during the Slovenian war for independence in June and July 1991. Together with the Minister of Interior Igor Bavčar, Janša was the main organiser of Slovenia's strategy against the Yugoslav People's Army.
In 1992, when the Slovenian Democratic Union broke into a liberal and a conservative wing, the leaders of the liberal fraction wanted to propose Janša as the compromise president of the party, but he refused the offer.Tine Hribar, Slovenci kot nacija: srečanja s sodobniki (Ljubljana: Enotnost, 1995), 261 After the party's final breakdown, he joined the Social Democratic Party of Slovenia (now called Slovenian Democratic Party) and remained Defence Minister in the centre-left coalition government of Janez Drnovšek until March 1994. In May 1993, he was elected president of the Social Democratic Party of Slovenia, a position he has held ever since.
Controversies and dismissal from ministerial post Janša has been accused of having abused his position as defense minister to consolidate political power, engaging in arms trafficking to arm combatants in the Yugoslav Wars in violation of a United Nations arms embargo, and blackmailing prominent individuals, including politicians, businesspeople, journalists, and cultural and literary figures, by threatening to make public information (to which he was privy to in his ministerial role) regarding their previously undisclosed involvement with the former communist secret police.