A few years ago, I slowly, with a heavy heart, ended my active entrepreneurial career, and now I just have some advice to give to young people. Well, in fact, I often go to look at City of AcrobatsAnd for fun, I help develop some technical toys and visit some clients. It is true that relationships are key in life.When I'm not wandering the world, I'm enjoying life in my little wooden house surrounded by mountains. Okay, not everything is perfect, the mountains I love so much are getting higher and harder to reach every year, but they are more beautiful than ever.

Slovenia has been an extremely Green Land. The transition to green and circular has been more successful than we could have hoped for, but we have lost a lot of our competitive edge against the Asian tigers by moving too fast. Emissions have been significantly reduced, and I am even more pleased personally that cars have been driving themselves on motorways for many years now. It will take some time for them to master our narrow mountain roads, but the fact that I can read my e-mails on the motorway is a big step forward.

I have devoted practically all my life to starting in Slovenia value entrepreneurship, enterprise and equity. When I started my entrepreneurial career over 50 years ago, I joked that it would take a hundred years to create a stable economic and political system. Now, sixty years later, I realise that I was not far from the truth. It seems that we just cannot get rid of history, that we are still limited in our smallness. Yes, another fifty years or so, and we will be.

Fortunately, the last 30 years have seen the emergence of a number of strong, domestically-owned companies that pay taxes at home, invest in young promising businesses and are a pillar of further economic development. We can be proud of Slovenia's know-how and innovation.

A big step forward in Slovenia happened when we started to talk about on the fundamental values of society and launch the project Slovenia's 5 core values. Slowly but steadily, we are developing the value of trust and cooperation. The biggest change we made was when we started to deliberately emphasise Respect and trust for politicsto encourage those who are sincerely committed to the progress of society. So fairnessis becoming appreciated, mutual assistance has always adorned us, and belonging has been strengthened. We started talking about moderation. A good example is recognising that not everyone can have the same salary, as income differences are a key element of motivation. But we need to maintain meaningful ratios. In our society, we would always like to have a ratio of 1:3, but a realistic sustainable ratio is 1:7. Higher ratios lead to social division.

The political space has finally stabilised, and the change of left and right parties in power has brought us a relatively good balance between economic power and social policy.

Systems of worker co-ownership of companies and the system of option-based remuneration have contributed significantly to development, while basic public services such as health, education, telecommunications and transport have remained predominantly publicly owned. Private companies operating in these areas create market conditions and raise the quality of services.

On the other hand, we have optimised the functioning of public administration through full digitisation. Today, you can use your phone to get all the services you need, and a mobile app reminds you not to forget anything. In recent years, we have finally begun to realise that the state does not have a monopoly, but that, just like businesses, it is in a global market where it must be competitive at least with neighbouring countries and, in today's dynamic world, with every country in the world. 

We are finally starting to realise that tax rises do not bring wealth, but poverty and social hardship.

One thing I am particularly pleased about. Finally, we have started to raise winners in education. We no longer require the encyclopaedic knowledge that is now available whenever we want it. We encourage children, reward them for their ideas and let them develop areas where they are strong. The economy and education are coming together, actively cooperating and intertwining. Young talent stays in Slovenia because we have created a place for them where they are free to create and failures are allowed. It is great to see that our entrepreneurial space is filled with young women and men entrepreneurs whom we have watched and supported in one way or another in their beginnings.

Personally, I will no longer be in this world when Slovenia celebrates its 100th anniversary of independence, but I believe that our great-grandchildren will be able to take it much further than we have on the basis of this winning mentality that we are now fostering. 

Good luck, our beloved Slovenia!