Prosecutorial Practice on Hate Speech in Slovenia: Context, Trends, and Issues

Neža Kogovšek Šalamon and Sergeja Hrvatič round out the thematic section on hate speech in the latest issue of the journal Annales a significant and timely empirical study. In their article Prosecutorial Practice on Hate Speech in Slovenia: Context, Trends, and Issues examine how Article 297 of the Slovenian Penal Code, the provision criminalizing public incitement to hatred, violence, or intolerance, is enacted in prosecutorial and judicial practice. They explain the Slovenian legal framework where Article 297 had long been understood as requiring both a public act of incitement, and either a threat to public order or the use of threat, insult, or verbal abuse. This dual condition made Slovenia’s approach among the narrowest in the EU (alongside Cyprus). 

 The 2019 Supreme Court judgment, however, clarified that these conditions are alternative, not cumulative, and that a threat to public order may be abstract, not concrete. This interpretation thus aligned Slovenia more closely with European rather than U.S. doctrine. The authors analysed 157 prosecutorial files from 2019 to 2023 to determine whether prosecutorial practice changed following the Supreme Court judgment. Their analysis shows that public figures accounted for a third of suspects. Only 14% of the reported cases resulted in indictments, and even fewer in convictions. The data reveal that most incidents occur online, where anonymity and platform architecture complicate evidence collection. “We cannot help but observe that the quality of indictments often needs improvement. There are examples of very “promising” cases among the case files where the prosecution failed before courts because the indictment was so poorly reasoned,” the authors conclude.