“The lack of rule of law inevitably leads to corruption. While we are all faced with the same global crisis, some of us perform and others not. When we look at where the effects were milder, the answer points to those countries where the rule of law works better. Therefore, the main reason for the crisis is not only in seemingly external or cyclical causes, but basically in the lack of values. In many cases, the management of public interests left behind the idea of the public good, transforming into clientelism and other sorts of destructive expressions. So, the basic ethical problem to which we are now confronted is that this cost is now expected to be shared by everybody. Our duty is to rebuild the elites, also within politics. We need elites which would exercise ethics at all levels of decision-making and practice it for the common good.”

Mr. Alojz Peterle has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2004 and is currently member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and substitute member of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI). He is Vice-Chair of the Delegation to the EU-Russia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee and Member of Delegation to the EU-Croatia Joint Parliamentary Committee. Previously Slovenia’s Prime Minister, the first since the country’s independence, Peterle also held the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs twice. Mr Peterle has also been an active promoter of cancer care as President of the all-party forum, ‘MEPs against Cancer’.