Do we like them?

Do we like Robert Golob?

Our score: 6 out of 10. Good on the harm side, but a disputed conflict-of-interest fight and election-eve leaks leave the good-person side a close call.

Golob came to politics from the energy business, not from the party machine. He ran into the 2022 election with a brand-new Freedom Movement and beat Janez Janša's long-ruling party, which is how a bloke from the electricity trade ended up running Slovenia.

The messy bit came right before the March 2026 vote. Leaked recordings surfaced alleging that state-owned firms were used to route payments to journalists and NGOs for friendly coverage. Golob said the material was taken out of context and manipulated, and he asked the EU to look into claims that Israeli firm Black Cube helped with the leaks.

There's also a running stoush with Slovenia's anti-graft watchdog. In January 2026 the opposition was pressing him to resign over its findings. Golob has disputed that process, and the case was still contested when I last looked. I couldn't open the watchdog's own documents, so treat the detail as unsettled.

On the harm check, nothing nasty from him turned up. After violence at the 2023 Pride parade he condemned it, and his government's statement tied the issue to Slovenia's standing on same-sex couples' rights. I found nothing on trans issues either way, so that's a gap rather than a pass.

On Gaza, his government made Slovenia the first EU country to impose an arms embargo on Israel in July 2025. He said Palestinians were “dying because humanitarian aid is systematically denied them”. Where you land on that depends on whether you read it as a moral stand or as going it alone while the EU stayed divided.

On the planet, he has framed climate change as something that touches everyone. In 2024 he said it is all-encompassing and affects each of us. How much his government delivered is beyond what I could verify, so credit him for the pitch and check the results.