Slovakia

The news about the murder of the investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová has shaken the entire country. They are not the only people who have been killed in Slovakia since 1989: “undesirable” people have already been physically eradicated in affairs that were linked, to a greater or lesser extent, to politics. 

On 1 July 2016 Slovakia assumed the Presidency of the EU Council. The government had been planning to implement the agreement reached between the UK and the EU in February 2016. But now they have to deal with the fact that Great Britain is leaving the European Union.

No parliamentary elections in Slovakia have ever caused so much surprise, consternation and dismay as those held on 5 March 2016. The results can be readily characterised as shocking.

A special EU summit of heads of state and government will take place on 23 September. After years of neglect, however, a solidary EU refugee policy cannot be elaborated in summary proceedings and under pressure. A commentary by Eva van de Rakt.

At the GLOBSEC 2015 security conference organised recently in Bratislava, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán concordantly rejected a European Union proposal to introduce a quota system for allocating refugees arriving in Europe from Africa and the Middle East to individual countries. The method in which the politicians formulated their disapproval, however, attested to the fact that they do not have a problem with quotas as such, but that they do not want “unwanted” foreigners to enter their countries. But whereas in the case of the Hungarian prime minister the negative position on quotas could be interpreted as a reaction to the wave of migrants entering his country from Serbia, including ethnic Albanians fleeing socio-economic problems in Kosovo, in the case of Robert Fico this was a statement of position pro futuro without any connection to the present situation in Slovakia - essentially a preventive warning that foreigners (refugees, migrants) are not welcome here.

Slovakia’s referendum “on the family” (this name was used in the media and in everyday communication, although it really does not correspond to the contents of the questions posed to voters), which was initiated by Alliance for the Family (AZR), an association of Catholic activists, ended on 7 February 2015 in a fiasco that no one anticipated.

On February 7 2015, a referendum on "protecting the family" to define marriage as a unique union between a man and a woman will be held in Slovakia. The article outlines how Slovak parties deal with the referendum.

The Velvet Revolution in November 1989 found Czechoslovakia, just like the other states emerging from the era of communist dictatorships, with a centralised economy, no political pluralism and a civil society limited to a few dissident initiatives. The new political elite were faced with the tremendous task of creating the institutions of liberal democracy; a market economy, the rule of law and a civil society.

“This time it’s different!” announced a major mobilisation campaign by the European Parliament (EP). What was new about the elections to the European Union’s only directly elected institution were changes brought to the EP by the Lisbon Treaty – more competencies, but in particular a closer connection between the decision of European voters and filling the position of head of the European executive. The slogan “This time it’s different!” foreshadowed greater interest and thus also greater voter participation.