Robert Fico in Kremlin, waiting to meet Vladimir Putin on his own. (source: TASR/AP )
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia, the last edition for 2024. It includes news about Robert Fico’s unexpected visit to Moscow just a couple of days before Christmas – a fitting lowlight to end a year that has brought too many reasons for concern.
To wrap up the year, I asked my colleagues from The Slovak Spectator and the Sme daily what 2024 has been like for them as journalists.
The next edition of Last Week in Slovakia will be sent to you after the Christmas break, on January 7. I wish you all the best in the new year and thank you for being our readers. Stay with us – we’ll stay with you.
Michaela Terenzani
2024
The year 2024 will always be remembered in Slovakia as the year in which there was an attempt on the life of the prime minister. This is not just because it was shocking, despicable and unprecedented – although it was – but because it arguably shifted the course of events that followed.
After Prime Minister Robert Fico first appeared in public after the attack, in which he was shot four times, he left no room for doubt that revenge would henceforth be his motivating principle – even more so than before – and that he would become ever more remorseless in pursuit of his goals, something his trip to shake Vladimir Putin’s hand on December 22 confirmed (see below).
Slovakia also got a new president: Fico's erstwhile protégé Peter Pellegrini beat Ivan Korčok after an election campaign marked by lies that exploited and deepened the existing divisions in society.
Even though cracks started appearing in Fico’s ruling coalition as the year progressed, the government, led by his Smer party, successfully passed a radical amendment to the Criminal Code early in the spring. As a result, several high-profile Smer-linked figures who had been accused or suspected of high-level corruption will no longer face prosecution or trial.
We have also seen attempts to dismantle several national cultural institutions; the evisceration of the public-service broadcaster; layoffs of experts from a number of ministries; a reversal in Slovakias’ foreign policy, accompanied by the gutting of the country’s professional diplomatic corps; and relentless attacks by ministers, officials and members of the ruling parties on any independent media outlets who continue to report on all this.
I asked my colleagues what it was like for them to report on Slovakia in 2024. Here is what they told me:
