RTVS workers wear black on April 25, 2024. (source: Facebook/Juraj Starovecký)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. Ministers okay a law that will enable RTVS to be turned into a state propaganda organ. Fico’s government intensifies pressure on the Supreme Court.
If you have a suggestion for how to make this overview better, let me know at michaela.terenzani@spectator.sk.
RTVS will become STVR
Dolná Krupá is known for many things. The small municipality outside the western Slovak city of Trnava surrounds a park with a mansion where Beethoven composed his Moonlight Sonata. In recent years, it has made the news for being home to the headquarters of the Slovak chapter of the Russian motorcycle gang – and Putin fan club – the Night Wolves. As of last Wednesday, it is also the place where the government of Robert Fico sealed the fate of Slovakia’s public-service broadcaster.
Government ministers agreed to back the new law, which will pave the way for RTVS to be reconstituted as a propaganda machine, during an out-of-office session at the premises of the collective farm in Dolná Krupá. The cabinet travelled to the village to stress the point that at their April 24 session they were focused on dealing with the alarming state of unpaid farmers’ subsidies (their response was to introduce zero-interest loans to carry farmers through the weeks and months of waiting for their assigned funds). They picked a farm headed by the Slovak Agricultural and Food Chamber’s president, Emil Macho, that happens to belong to the Agrofert group of former (and possibly future) Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš, a billionaire.
Journalists and other employees at RTVS staged a “black day” of protest last Thursday, with people on the screens wearing only black.
Coalition avoids past weaknesses
The new law was proposed by Culture Minister Martina Šimkovičová, whose department oversees the media. Šimkovičová – a one-time TV presenter; later a starlet of the disinformation scene known for spreading misleading information about Covid vaccination and the war in Ukraine, among other things; and, most recently, an amateur art critic – was nominated for her ministerial post by the junior coalition partner, the far-right Slovak National Party (SNS). But Fico, who leads the Smer party, explicitly supported her and the law she is sponsoring during a visit to the Culture Ministry earlier in the week, during which he called her critics “spiritually homeless” and urged her to push the changes through as quickly as possible.
Yet, contrary to Fico and others’ earlier stated intention, the law will not be passed via a fast-tracked procedure. They had planned to justify using the minimum-scrutiny procedure by citing supposed human rights violations. During his Culture Ministry visit, Fico repeated this claim, saying that RTVS is violating people’s rights because – he alleges – it is biased.
