Adrijan Bakič, a foreign affairs reporter for Slovenian public broadcaster RTV Slovenija, became its Brussels correspondent in September, taking on one of the busiest beats in European journalism after years of reporting on Europe and the Americas.
The move changes his base more than his job. Bakič has spent years working from Ljubljana and travelling to cover stories abroad, experience that he says taught him how to find his feet in unfamiliar places and build credibility far from home.
“When you call and say you’re from the Slovenian public broadcaster, it’s—who cares, sometimes. You have to explain who you are and build trust.”
Lessons From Brexit Reporting
An earlier posting in London gave him a taste of life as a full-time correspondent. He arrived during the turbulent Brexit negotiations and had to make a complex, often slow-moving political process engaging for viewers back home.
“The negotiations were not going anywhere, actually,” he recalls. “It was challenging how to make what might be boring, on the one hand, interesting for Slovenian viewers.”
Rather than focusing only on political elites, he looked for human stories. He interviewed fishermen, travelled to Northern Ireland and Wales, and explored how Brexit shaped people’s hopes and fears.
“Fishermen were really for Brexit,” he says. When he went back years later, they were disappointed: “It’s not the Brexit that they expected.”
Five Languages, Three Platforms
Bakič speaks Slovenian, English, Spanish and Serbo-Croatian, as well as basic French. His reporting has ranged from the border dispute between Slovenia and Croatia to a documentary on the energy transition in the United States.
Brussels also brings a bigger workload, as RTV Slovenija’s foreign correspondents report for radio, television and online. “I’m getting a bigger package,” he says.
Why Brussels Matters to Slovenians
He arrives at a critical moment for the European Union.
“Since my arrival in Brussels, it has felt like rushing from day to day and from one topic to another—whether covering the Slovenian prime minister’s visit to NATO or reporting on the State of the Union, MFF negotiations [Ed. Multiannual Financial Framework, for the EU’s 2028-2034 budget], and high fuel prices,” he says.
“It will be very interesting where the EU goes,” he says.
EU reporting is often seen as lacking the drama of Washington politics, but Bakič argues that its impact is closer to home. “Slovenians depend more on what’s decided in Brussels than what [is decided] in Washington.”
His aim remains the same as it was in London: to explain complex realities clearly and bring distant stories closer to home.
Sources
- RTV Slovenija — https://www.rtvslo.si/
- Adrijan Bakič on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrijan-baki%C4%8D-b3b40515b/