Robert Fico (source: TASR)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. The Slovak prime minister turns on the Brits. Roma victims of police violence in the eastern-Slovak town of Moldava nad Bodvou were ignored for years – now there’s a new twist in their case.
If you have a suggestion on how to make this overview better, let me know at michaela.terenzani@spectator.sk.
Fico creates a summer smokescreen
When the summer break is over, the ruling coalition will need to dive straight into some pressing issues, including talks over a state budget that will need to bring a second round of public spending cuts and tax hikes known under the umbrella term of “consolidation”.
The Finance Ministry has promised the public that it will see the final version of its plan after August 20; officials say they are still working on it. But it is already clear enough that whatever ingredients they choose and however they serve them up, they will not be easy for the people of Slovakia to swallow. Barely half a year since a steep rise in the basic rate of VAT, there is already talk – fanned by the opposition – of yet another VAT hike. Prime Minister Robert Fico has dismissed this as untrue, but the Finance Ministry has not denied it.
Meanwhile, Fico and his government also face questions about their plans to build another nuclear power plant in the western-Slovak village of Jaslovské Bohunice (which is already home to one working atomic plant), amid strong signals that they have already chosen the American company Westinghouse to supply the technology – without any public tender, despite a likely price tag in the tens of billions. A welcome side-benefit of the deal for the Slovak prime minister is reportedly a possible visit to Donald Trump in the White House, VSquare reported in July citing insider sources – although it has not been officially confirmed as of this writing.
‘Four corners of the world’
Since his re-entry to the Oval Office early this year, Trump has not officially received the prime minister of any Visegrad Group country – not even Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, whom he has mentioned and praised much more often than Fico. The Slovak premier might therefore through the door, and would no doubt flaunt the photo-op as proof of the success of his “all four corners of the world” foreign policy.
Geographically speaking, it would indeed be a rare chance to show off his alliances in the West – particularly after this last week, during which he showed once again how he treats partners with whom Slovakia once chose freely and deliberately to build a strong relationship, based on shared values and aspirations, and a common determination to defend them.
One of those partners is the United Kingdom, which is no longer an EU partner but remains a NATO ally and whose ties to Slovakia go a long way back. The UK was, after all, the place where the Czech and Slovak antifascist leaders – and let us recall that antifascism is a cause that Fico frequently asserts is close to his heart – were able to regroup and survive during World War II.
