IN THE years when Slovenia was part of communist Yugoslavia, it is estimated that up to 30,000 Slovenes - 2% of the entire population - left to settle in Australia. But these days, far more people arrive in Slovenia than leave. Go there, and you understand why.
For one thing, Slovenia and its capital, Ljubljana, have an irresistible charm. In the Financial Times the other day, travel writer Jan Morris called it "the most delightful small country in Europe … God evidently smiles on Ljubljana, as he does on all Slovenes".
But people are not migrating to Slovenia just for its scenery and cafe culture. It's a country that works, one that has chosen its own way to run an economy - a way that has little to do with economic rationalist models - and is developing at an impressive pace, in self-imposed isolation from global financial markets.
You may be struggling to place Slovenia on a map. It's a country of just over 20,000 square kilometres and 2 million people, tucked on what it calls "the sunny side of the Alps", just south of Austria and just east of Venice. It's the westernmost of the six republics that formed the old Yugoslavia. In 1991 it declared its independence, and these days it is part of the European Union and the euro zone.
