Last Week: Attempt to oust Šimečka exposes coalition’s hypocrisy

Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. Šimečka’s ouster is underway, but it is hardly going as planned. Terrorgram arrests have a Slovak link. Slovakia may face cuts in EU funds, Bloomberg reports.

If you have a suggestion on how to make this overview better, let me know at michaela.terenzani@spectator.sk.

Šimečka strikes back, prompting coalition MPs to demand apologies

“Please apologise to me, right now,” said Hlas MP Ján Blcháč when MPs from Progressive Slovakia (PS) presented a list of MPs whose organisations or family members have received state grants during the years that the Smer party was in power. (Blcháč was a Smer MP until 2020.)

Blcháč, who was returned to parliament from 15th spot on the Hlas slate in last September’s parliamentary elections, was a member of the supervisory board of the Tranoscius religious publishing house, which has received approximately €600,000 in various state grants over the last 10 years. The list features some 880 contracts for state grants to organisations or people with links to coalition MPs worth a total of €49 million, including some for the companies of Robert Fico’s relatives.

PS used the list as its main line of defence during an extraordinary parliamentary session convened on Thursday with a single item on its agenda – the dismissal of party leader Michal Šimečka from his position as a deputy speaker of parliament.

Coalition MPs from Smer and Slovak National Party (SNS) have used fabricated accusations against Šimečka as the basis for the proposed ouster – citing the fact that his mother, Marta Šimečková, and his partner, Soňa Ferienčíková, have received grants from state agencies over the years, and noting that the Milan Šimečka Foundation – which is named after the PS leader’s late grandfather, who was a dissident in the 1970s and 1980s and an advisor to President Václav Havel – was a regular recipient of grants as well.