A headline of the Slovenian left-wing magazine Mladina, which criticised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, caused a diplomatic spat between the two countries while the Creative Director of the magazine, Robert Botteri, accused Hungary’s government of trying to be the editor in his magazine.

Orban and Hungary's Government asked Slovenia to sanction and censor Mladina over the headline.

Mladina exists since the 1920’s – before the Kingdom of Slovens, Croats and Serbs, WWII, Yugoslavia and the wars of the 1990s, but whether it will also survive the pressure it faces today is questionable, Botteri said.

The disputed headline issue “revealed many things,” he told N1.

“Mladina is writing about the role Hungary’s policy is playing in Slovenia over the past two years when we saw that some form the inner circle of the Hungarian Prime Minister are financing the party of (former Slovenian PM) Janez Jansa,” Botteri said.

“Immediately after that, they began buying up the media which emerged around our right-wing. Suddenly, they became minority owners, and then majority owners, and now they are 100 per cent owners of television stations, newspapers and a huge web portal,” he said, adding that “suddenly, all those channels and newspapers began promoting Hungarian policies.”

All of Europe was appalled by the fate of Syrian refugees, but a part of Slovenian media began promoting Hungary's views on the issue, he said.

Jansa used to write for Mladina and was one of those who incited public criticism of the policies of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic in Slovenia during the late 1980s, which led to Slovenia’s independence and brought the country closer to Europe.

“I must say, since I know him from those times, that I am truly disappointed. He could have become the Slovenian Vaclav Havel, but he became Slovenia’s Viktor Orban. He could have been a democrat, but he is leaning towards becoming an autocrat – something he fought against,” Botteri said.

He also said that “he does not see any reason” for Jansa to behave in such a way apart from financial gains.

“It is about finances, and Orban simply gave him so much money that he and his party are simply financially dependent on him,” he said.

“I cannot believe that someone who is a member of the same group as Angela Merkel, as Germany, which was always for Slovenians a role model and everyone wanted it to be like in Germany, to abandon that an accept some kind of influence from Hungary,” he concluded.