LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AFP) — Slovenians began voting on Sunday in tight parliamentary elections, with the conservatives of veteran politician Janez Jansa, an admirer of United States President Donald Trump, eyeing a comeback.

A Jansa return could see the ex-Yugoslav nation, a European Union (EU) member of two million people, take an illiberal turn again after four years of center-left rule under liberal Prime Minister Robert Golob.

Foreign interference claims have shaken the campaign, with authorities probing whether an Israeli intelligence firm was behind secretly recorded videos suggesting alleged graft in Golob’s government.

“I think these are the most important elections in Slovenia in a long time,” a 26-year-old landscape architect, who only gave her name as Shiva, told Agence France-Presse this week in the capital, Ljubljana.

The last government of three-time premier Jansa — who is also an ally of nationalist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban — saw mass protests and EU criticism over rule-of-law concerns.

Under Golob, a political newcomer when he took over from Jansa in 2022, Slovenia legalized same-sex marriage and became one of the few EU countries to describe Israel’s war in Gaza as “genocide.”