{"id":26330,"date":"2026-03-19T09:09:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T09:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/26330\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T09:09:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T09:09:14","slug":"slovenia-urges-eu-to-probe-reports-that-israeli-spies-meddled-in-election-race-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/26330\/","title":{"rendered":"Slovenia urges EU to probe reports that Israeli spies meddled in election race \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Slovenia goes to the polls Sunday in an election pitting the liberal Golob against right-wing populist Janez Jan\u0161a, who currently has a narrow lead according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/europe-poll-of-polls\/slovenia\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/europe-poll-of-polls\/slovenia\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">POLITICO\u2019s Poll of Polls<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Leaked audio and video recordings, published earlier this month and apparently designed to tie Golob\u2019s government to corruption, showed prominent Slovenian figures apparently discussing illegal lobbying and the misuse of state funds.<\/p>\n<p>Slovenian authorities this week announced that four operatives of Black Cube, a private intelligence firm founded by former members of the Israel Defense Forces, had visited the country and conducted \u201cillegal surveillance\u201d and \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/black-cube-leak-tape-corruption-israel-spy-firm-slovenia-election\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">wiretapping<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Representatives for Black Cube did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. <\/p>\n<p>In his letter, Golob pointed to previous operations carried out by Black Cube, including in Romania and Hungary in the last decade, to highlight its ongoing interference.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGiven the continuous, systemic operations performed by Black Cube and the recent reported operations, they pose a direct challenge to the newly established European Democracy Shield,\u201d Golob said. \u201cAs the European Centre for Democratic Resilience began its operational work in February 2026, this case provides a critical test of its mandate to protect Member States against foreign interference.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI urge the Commission to investigate the reports and refer the matter to the European Centre for Democratic Resilience for an immediate threat assessment,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The European Democracy Shield is an EU initiative aimed at protecting member countries from foreign interference and hybrid threats by strengthening monitoring, coordination and rapid response to disinformation and covert influence operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Slovenia goes to the polls Sunday in an election pitting the liberal Golob against right-wing populist Janez Jan\u0161a,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7833,12515,1303,12492,4559,37,12494,567],"class_list":{"0":"post-26330","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-corruption","9":"tag-election-security","10":"tag-elections","11":"tag-elections-in-europe","12":"tag-espionage","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-slovenia","15":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116255061658072706","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}