Slovenia. With a margin of just four thousand votes, outgoing Prime Minister Robert Golob wrested a victory from the conservative opposition that the European chancelleries welcomed with relief. But the Slovenian parliamentary elections of 22 March 2026 will go down in history not only for the photo-finish result, but also for the scandal that preceded them: the alleged activities of Black Cube, the private Israeli intelligence company accused of working in the shadows to influence the vote in favour of former Prime Minister Janez Janša.

A victory by a whisker

Golob’s Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda) stopped at 28.55% of the vote, taking 29 seats out of the 90 available in the national parliament. Behind him, Janša’s Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) picked up 28.17%, translating into 28 seats. The outgoing premier’s party withstood the brunt of months of unfavourable polls in what many commentators have already dubbed the most crucial vote in independent Slovenia.

From the stage of his headquarters in Ljubljana, Golob claimed victory with words destined to resonate far beyond national borders:“You have given your vote to democracy.” A phrase that, in the context of the Black Cube scandal, takes on greater specific weight.

Janša, the axis with Orbán and Trump

Janez Janša is a veteran of Slovenian politics – three terms as prime minister, a conviction for corruption that was later overturned, and a track record of increasing proximity to the national-populist governments of Europe and America. Leader of the SDS, Slovenia’s oldest conservative party, Janša has over the years built a solid alliance with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and has openly cultivated his admiration for Donald Trump, with whom he has had direct dealings even before his second inauguration in the White House.

A Janša victory would have had immediate consequences for Slovenian foreign policy: Slovenia’s entry into the sovereignist bloc would have strengthened centrifugal drives in the European Union and would probably have placed a further obstacle in the way of financial support for Ukraine, at a stage already marked by the very high tensions between Brussels and Budapest.

The spy scandal

On 22 December 2025, a private jet lands at Ljubljana airport. On board, according to flight-tracking data reconstructed by the non-governmental organisation 8 March Institute – a group of Slovenian journalists, activists and researchers – travelled Dan Zorella, managing director of Black Cube, Giora Eiland, former head of the Israeli National Security Council and consultant to the company, and Liron Tzur. That same day, the three would spend about two hours in the headquarters of the Slovenian Democratic Party, at 8 Trstenjakova Street in Ljubljana. This was not an isolated appearance: SOVA, the Slovenian intelligence and security agency, ascertained four separate visits of Black Cube representatives to the country within six months before the vote.

The heart of the operation, according to investigators’ reconstructions, was the website corruption2026.com, which appeared in the weeks before the vote with videos showing alleged corruption schemes against people close to Golob. The interlocutors shown in the recordings were, in reality, undercover Black Cube operatives who had approached the premier’s collaborators posing as investors. The method is precise and replicable: recruitment through fake profiles on LinkedIn, meetings in hotels and public places with altered identities, clandestine recordings, publication of the material on fictitious company sites – promptly deleted after use – with a calibrated timing to maximise the impact close to the vote.

The director of SOVA (the Slovenian intelligence agency) Joško Kadivnik presented the National Security Council with ‘material evidence’ of these connections, and the State passed everything on to the Prosecutor’s Office and the Police. However, one crucial knot remains unresolved: who commissioned and financed the entire operation from inside Slovenia.“It is clear that someone paid them,” researcher Nika Kovač of the 8 March Institute told the Brussels Times.“It is up to the authorities to investigate and inform the public.”

Janša first denied any contact with the company, then admitted to knowing Eiland, although he could not remember the date of the meeting. SDS changed version several times: first stating that he had‘never heard of Black Cube‘, then reversing the narrative with a stunt – if the company had really exposed corruption, it would deserve ‘a monument in the centre of Ljubljana’. Black Cube, formally questioned by both Reuters and The Economist, has maintained total silence.

Who is Black Cube

Founded in 2010 by Zorella and Avi Yanus, both former Israeli intelligence officers, Black Cube is now one of the world’s best-known private spy agencies . Its advisory board includes former Mossad director Meir Dagan and former Shin Bet chief Efraim Halevy – an institutional track record that guarantees credibility in recruiting high-profile clients. The company describes itself as a ‘provider of intelligence services for high-profile disputes, arbitrations and white-collar crime cases’: a description that clashes with the documented methods and the words of Prime Minister Golob, who in his letter to Ursula von der Leyen described the company’s activities as‘smear campaigns with one goal: to undermine citizens’ trust in democratic processes’.

The Slovenian case is not the first clash between Black Cube and European institutions. In 2016, agents of the company tried to compromise Romanian anti-corruption prosecutor Laura Kövesi: Zorella admitted that she had instructed her operatives to hack into her e-mails. Two agents were arrested; in 2022 the founders plea-bargained, receiving suspended sentences. Golob reminded the European Commission that similar operations would also be conducted in Hungary, in 2018 and 2022 – a pattern that transforms the Slovenian case from an isolated incident to a systemic phenomenon.

The European Node

For Brussels, the Slovenian result is a tactical relief. Slovenia joins the list of countries where pro-European forces have withstood the brunt of national-populist opposition, at a time when the balance within the Union is increasingly fragile. Golob has formally asked the European Commission to open an investigation, and French President Emmanuel Macron has echoed the call, calling on Brussels to establish guidelines to counter this kind of interference.

But the Black Cube scandal opens up a deeper and more uncomfortable question: the threat to European democracies no longer comes only from Moscow, but also from opaque and technically sophisticated private actors moving in the parallel economy of commercial intelligence. The Italian senator Marco Lombardo, an exponent of Azione, expressed himself clearly on this front:“Every election shows the urgency of adopting a European Democratic Shield against any foreign interference, to protect the integrity of electoral processes.” An appeal that, in the Slovenian context, sounds less like a political wish and more like an urgent diagnosis.

The government to come

Golob’s victory does not automatically translate into stability. With 29 seats, the Freedom Movement is far from an absolute majority of 46 MPs. The Social Democrats, with 6 seats, are not enough. Golob will have to look to the two newcomer formations: the Democrats of Anže Logar (6 seats) and the populist movement Resni.ca (5 seats). Paradoxically, even one of these forces could tip the balance towards Janša, making the outgoing premier’s reappointment anything but a foregone conclusion.

Slovenia voted for democracy, as Golob said. But forming a government that embodies it will be the real test of the coming days.