• In the wake of declining popular support and increasing pressure from ruling parties SaS, For the People, and his own OĽaNO, Prime Minister Igor Matovič agreed in March to step aside and leave space for a cabinet reshuffle.1 Resistance to Matovič’s aggressive political style had been mounting during his first year in office and culminated in spring 2021 when he decided to procure the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, which he pursued in a semi-secretive way and presented as the turning point in the fight against COVID-19. Since the vaccine was not approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), Matovič pressured various domestic authorities to sanction its use. When the State Institute for Drug Control (ŠÚKL) refused to exempt the vaccine from certification, Matovič launched a series of personal attacks against institute head Zuzana Baťová, fomenting a strong counter-reaction among segments of the public and political class.2
• In the cabinet reshuffle, Matovič swapped places with party colleague and finance minister Eduard Heger, renowned for his conciliatory political style. The embattled Matovič loyalist Marek Krajčí lost the health ministry portfolio following harsh criticism for his underperformance in fighting COVID-19. The new cabinet was appointed on April 1.3
• While this move temporarily calmed tensions in the polity, investigations into corruption cases from the Smer-SD era further polarization between the government and the opposition. In late December 2020, former Slovak Police Force president Milan Lučanský committed suicide while in detention on corruption charges.4 The event was used by the opposition and antisystem activists to launch a campaign portraying the corruption investigations as an effort to eliminate the opposition, including by physical means. At the institutional level, the campaign continued when former PM Robert Fico (Smer-SD) announced his intention to sponsor a referendum on the early termination of the current National Council (Slovakia’s unicameral, 150-seat parliament), elected in 2020.5 Smer-SD, cooperating with Voice–Social Democracy (HLAS) and, unofficially, the far-right People’s Party Our Slovakia (ĽSNS), successfully collected the necessary referendum signatures.6 After the Constitutional Court, acting on a request from President Zuzana Čaputová, ruled out the referendum under current legislation (see “Electoral Process”), antigovernment rhetoric intensified with claims that officials were assaulting democracy. Former PM Matovič and We Are Family party leader Boris Kollár agreed in principle with a legislative change that would make this kind of referendum legal even though they did not consider it urgent.7
• A new conflict within the ruling coalition formed over rules for pretrial detention. The topic was nourished by Robert Fico, who claimed that pretrial detention had been used to force accused functionaries from his government to confess to corruption. The issue was aggravated after the arrest of the head of the Slovak Intelligence Service (SIS), nominated by We Are Family (see “Corruption”). The party exerted intense pressure on the rest of the coalition8 as well as the public to shorten the maximum duration of detention,9 which was interpreted by some coalition partners as a de facto alliance with the opposition in its effort to undermine the integrity of the anticorruption effort. Meanwhile, the parliamentary caucus of coalition partner For the People disintegrated and a majority of its members joined SaS.10
• Tensions escalated in the spring when open conflicts broke out among law enforcement services over the legality of procedures used by anticorruption investigators at the National Criminal Agency (NAKA). The media presented the clash as a “war of cops,” pitting NAKA (and the Special Prosecutor’s Office) against the SIS, the Bureau of the Inspection Service (police), and the General Prosecutor’s Office. NAKA’s opponents argued that the agency utilized testimonies from “contrite” (cooperating) suspects to forge cases against functionaries of the Robert Fico and Peter Pellegrini governments who were accused of corruption. These testimonies were allegedly fabricated or traded for beneficial treatment in the form of plea deals. Politically, NAKA was supported by most of the ruling parties, while the opposition, joined by the embittered We Are Family, supported arguments of the counter-position, increasingly represented by Prosecutor General Maroš Žilinka. The ruling coalition attempted to extinguish the institutional conflicts by calling a controversial confidential meeting between political brass and heads of law enforcement agencies in May under the auspices of the SIS.11 This attempt was unsuccessful and further fueled conspiracy discourses within political and law enforcement spheres.
• In the fall, the government found itself encircled on two fronts. Outside pressure from the energized opposition allied with the antisystem part of civil society. Internally, the estranged ruling coalition member We Are Family effectively blocked all planned government reforms, including healthcare and the court system.12 These proposed reforms had already suffered from poor public support and clumsy communications. In addition, the affected parties, mainly doctors and legal professionals, had emphatically protested the envisioned changes. For example, in October, members of the judiciary protested en masse against the announced court reform.13
• As a result, the embattled government unapologetically applied stricter political control over state offices and institutions, particularly in the selection of senior functionaries. Although this occurred within the legal framework, the government reneged on its promise to bring more openness and public voices to the selection of crucial cadres within the state apparatus. The government also returned the power to appoint the president of the police and head of the Bureau of the Inspection Service to the Minister of Interior, and contemplated firing senior bureaucrats without justification.14 (Such aggressive controls had been typical of Slovak politics until the last few years of Smer-SD’s tenure, an about-face that observers considered a preemptive move to shield party loyalists in the state apparatus.) Some government officials signaled that the centralizing measures were necessary to cleanse the state apparatus of malevolent appointees of the old regime, who had used institutional independence to resist government policy initiatives for personal, political, or corporate reasons. For example, the ruling party OĽaNO justified personnel changes as a “political decision for the sake of fulfillment of the anticorruption agenda.”15
• A major reconfiguration of political power took place inside the opposition with the split of the radical People’s Party Our Slovakia (ĽSNS) in March. The reasons for the split were not of an ideological or programmatic nature; rather, conflict within the party leadership broke out when chairman Marián Kotleba forced through a change to the party statute in a radically centralized direction. The powers of party functionaries were redistributed, and key positions were filled with Kotleba loyalists. Kotleba also made it possible for him to run the party from prison ahead of an expected Supreme Court ruling on his 2020 four-year sentence for propagating extremist ideas.16 In response, a party faction led by ĽSNS MEP Milan Uhrík split off, taking much of ĽSNS’s parliamentary representation. The new party, Republika, also soon outdid ĽSNS in polls, thus sending the latter’s public support below the threshold for parliamentary representation.

• In 2021, reforms to Slovakia’s electoral framework were passed in advance of the 2022 regional and local elections. The hot debate over the rules for referendums to terminate the tenure of parliament (aka, early elections referendums) still simmered at year’s end.
• The statute of the State Electoral Commission (ŠVK), which oversees the nation’s electoral processes, was amended in March to allow one of its members to be nominated by the head of the newly created Supreme Administrative Court (NSS), which will adjudicate electoral disputes.17
• In May, the Constitutional Court ruled that the previous government’s decision to introduce a 50-day moratorium prior to elections for publishing political party poll rankings—which was not applied during the 2020 national elections—was in breach of the constitution as well as the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).18 Consequently, the government proposed a series of amendments to the electoral code that were passed in December. These include shortening the poll moratorium to 48 hours prior to elections, new caps on campaign expenses in subnational elections, instituting effective co-responsibility of political parties for their candidates’ campaign conduct, and several technical changes to the work of precinct commissions.19 The amendments also clarified legal barriers to participation in elections during pandemics, such as barring voters who refuse to comply with epidemiological measures from polling places.
• In February, a petition committee began collecting signatures for a referendum on ending the tenure of the parliament elected in 2020. While formally nonpartisan, the committee was staffed by those close to Smer-SD, HLAS, the extra-parliamentary Slovak National Party (SNS), and politicians from ĽSNS and its recent splinter, Republika.20 Smer-SD and HLAS rank-and-file members also collected signatures in the field.21 In May, the committee submitted 585,000 signatures to the Presidential Office, far more than the 350,000 required by the constitution to initiate the referendum.22 To dispel lingering doubts caused by past contradictory judgments from the Constitutional Court, President Čaputová petitioned the court to decide on whether the Slovak legal framework provided for the referendum.23 In July, the court decided that, under current rules, there was no possibility to call such a referendum.24 The president therefore refused to call the vote but stated she was willing to do so if the constitution were appropriately amended.25 The opposition decried the move as an assault on democracy,26 while most coalition parties in principle confirmed the intention to amend the constitution.27

• In 2021, the relationship between political elites and civil society featured more ideological differences than previously. The opposition criticized “political NGOs” (nongovernmental organizations) for allegedly siding with the government, for example, former PM Robert Fico’s criticism of Transparency International Slovakia.28 Some anticorruption civil society organizations (CSOs) participated in government efforts to improve the transparency of state institutions, but they also criticized government proposals that they deemed in direct contradiction with the values they advocate.
• In January, the Minister of Labor, Social Affairs, and Family, Milan Krajniak, was criticized for awarding subsidies intended for organizations advancing gender equality to conservative, pro-life organizations, which, apparently, did not score high in the rankings prepared by call assessors.29 Leaked to the public, the scoring sheets showed that a number of progressive and notably more professionalized NGOs topped the rankings, whereas the scores of the winning organizations were mediocre. The ministry argued that feminist organizations had been systematically preferred by the previous leadership, and it thereby interpreted the award as a compensatory measure.30 Some of the rejected organizations were later successful in calls put out by the Ministry of Justice, led by the more progressive cabinet member Mária Kolíková.31
• In a positive example of collaboration, Transparency International Slovakia audited the State Material Reserves Administration (SŠHR) and prepared an anticorruption strategy for the organization, which is in charge of purchasing and storing strategic supplies for the nation.32 Under its previous leadership, which was prosecuted for embezzlement, the institution had been considered a bedrock of political corruption. Meanwhile, a consortium of pro-transparency NGOs systematically criticized initiatives for public procurement and public housing put forward by Deputy Prime Minister Štefan Holý (We Are Family) as potentially enlarging the space for corruption (see “Corruption”).33
• Academics expressed concerns over the government plan to amend the law on public higher education,34 particularly changes proposed in the powers, composition, and nominating rules for members of public university statutory bodies that would increase the influence of the Ministry of Education. While the ministry openly talked about increasing public input in university governance, the institutions themselves interpreted the proposal as curbing academic self-government through politicization and underfunding.35 In the end, the ministry withdrew the bill in March and promised to address the concerns of academia.36
• The Trade Union Conference (KOZ), the once-dominant trade organization, returned to tripartite negotiations within the Economic and Social Agreement Council (RHED), which it had abandoned in 2020 after the government allowed other union organizations to participate in the council’s work. KOZ, however, continued to criticize various aspects of the labor code.37 It also supported the early elections referendum sponsored by the opposition parties.38
• Proponents of restricting access to abortion and the rights of sexual minorities continued to submit bills to the National Council.39 In June, maverick OĽaNO MP Martin Čepček submitted a bill that would forbid abortion under any circumstances other than rape and severe health reasons, for which he was expelled from the party’s parliamentary caucus. This coincided with an almost identical ĽSNS initiative.40 In November, a much less restrictive proposal by another OĽaNO MP, Anna Záborská, was defeated by one vote in the second reading.41 Záborská is known for her systematic push for pro-life amendments in which mild and incremental restrictions are balanced by benefits for women who choose to continue their pregnancy over having an abortion. Radical proposals by other MPs are largely viewed as attempts to seek attention and recognition among the conservative constituency. The October parliamentary session saw unsuccessful votes on five proposals to limit the rights of sexual minorities, some inspired by legislation in Hungary.42 Initiators of these bills were MPs elected on the ĽSNS list, currently unattached, or organized by the splinter party Republika.
• In 2021, Slovak civil society witnessed the mobilization of its radical “uncivil” counterpart, manifested largely through social media–coordinated demonstrations against COVID-19 measures. In July, protesters poured into the streets of the capital Bratislava, blocking traffic on one of the main thoroughfares. Police were unprepared for the street action and for hours failed to respond with appropriate measures.43 A similar demonstration took place in front of the parliament.44 These protests attracted the attention of the radical opposition—namely, Smer-SD and Republika—which staged similar protests presented as grassroots initiatives, such as the demonstration on September 1 (Slovak Constitution Day).45 Anti-mask activists, often including radical nationalist and antisystem militants, also staged a series of provocations in October by refusing to wear epidemiological masks in supermarkets, confronting security guards, and streaming the resulting arguments on social media.46 In these cases, political parties, particularly ĽSNS, tried to capitalize on the media attention on these actions by following after protesters and calling for the boycott of supermarkets that required face masks (essentially, all of them).47

• Developments in Slovakia’s media scene in 2021 showed renewed interest by the political class in reforming the legal framework, including proposals to protect the work of journalists through targeted legislation.
• Denník N journalist Monika Tódová, who covered a number of high-profile corruption investigations, reported in January that she had been followed by unknown men who were later confronted by the police. Earlier, former PM Fico (Smer-SD) had published personal information about Tódová—particularly a meeting she had with a judge on the Special Criminal Court—to support his claim that Tódová was part of a conspiracy of journalists and legal professionals aimed at discrediting his political party.48 These events accelerated work on the Media Law amendment to increase protections for journalists. Other measures discussed included an amendment to the penal law ending imprisonment as a punishment for defamation and a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the protection of journalists’ sources and access to information.49
• In November, the government approved a Media Law amendment, sending the measure to the parliament. The amendment would now apply basic rules for traditional print and broadcast media to online media. Other changes require all media to publish the identity of investors/donors providing more than €1,200, as well as list them on the ultimate beneficial owners register, in a move to make media ownership structures more transparent.50 The National Council had not passed the amendment by year’s end.
• Part of the ruling coalition expressed a desire to reform the public broadcaster RTVS, a 2020 goal that was scuttled by the COVID-19 emergency. First, OĽaNO announced it would initiate the creation of an ethics commission within RTVS that would oversee, among other things, contested layoffs of journalists.51 Later, a discussion started about reforming the selection procedure for the head of RTVS. A majority of ruling coalition MPs preferred to return that power to the institution’s council, which would be reformed, as opposed to the current means of selection by the parliament. As part of the broader pattern of conflicts within the ruling coalition, both initiatives were vetoed by We Are Family, which argued in favor of retaining the current mechanisms.52
• Two of Slovakia’s major daily newspapers witnessed changes in their ownership structure, although the implications for press freedom are unclear. Pravda’s publisher Perex was sold by Northcliffe International Ltd. to Our Media SR, which is owned by Synot Invest Ltd., controlled by the Czech entrepreneur and former senator Ivo Valenta.53 Ownership changes at the daily Sme were even more noteworthy as the controversial private equity group Penta Investments sold its minority share in Sme’s publisher Petit Press to Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF)—which had made a loan to Petit Press in the 1990s when it was harassed by then-PM Vladimir Mečiar, enabling it to purchase its first print shop.54 Petit Press marketed the change as the culmination of a six-year effort to end a “hostile takeover” by Penta.55 Penta, on the other hand, labeled the change as a business dispute.56
• Influential publishing house Ringier purchased a number of digital media outlets from Germany’s Axel Springer in several East-Central European countries. In addition to several commercial media, Ringier obtained Aktuality.sk, a digital news portal with a strong investigative journalism team (and the employer of the late Ján Kuciak).57

• In 2021, most relations between Slovakia’s central and local governments were influenced by measures to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. An initiative to limit municipal powers in the area of housing also shaped this rapport (or lack thereof). In June, the Supreme Office of Control published an audit reporting that the majority of municipalities (about 3,000) were struggling with debt, the combined liability reaching €1.5 billion.58 This illustrates the financial weaknesses of Slovak municipalities and explains much of their dependence on the central government.
• In January, a government audio recording revealed then–prime minister Matovič insinuating that local governments were responsible for the slow progress of COVID-19 testing, and his comments also suggested that he would be in favor of a statute enabling the central government and armed forces to compel local governments to comply with government directives.59 Mayors across the country countered that it was exactly the efforts and sacrifice of local governments that had made the project of wholesale testing possible.60 The Association of Towns and Cities of Slovakia (ZMOS) conducted polls that suggested 70 percent of people were satisfied with the performance of their mayors during the pandemic.61 In another poll, 48 percent of respondents trusted local governments to help them in times of distress, compared to only 14 percent who trust in the central government.62 Voices of local governments substantially contributed to phasing out the wholesale antigen testing program, arguing that PM Matovič’s pet project had made a questionable contribution to mitigating the pandemic and was extremely taxing on local financial and human resources.63
• Municipalities, and particularly ZMOS, were active in campaigning against an initiative sponsored by the ruling coalition’s We Are Family to limit the prerogatives of local governments in housing and in building permitting. The proposed reform was intended to streamline the party’s flagship project focused on building cheap rental housing projects on a mass scale. Municipalities denied that We Are Family’s plans were conducive to more accessible housing and insinuated that they would facilitate an increased role for developers in the permitting process.64 The issue remained open at year’s end.
• Under leadership of the new prime minister, Eduard Heger, the cabinet made an effort to calm the central government’s relationship with local governments. PM Heger agreed with municipalities to hold regular quarterly meetings, and the good will was reciprocated.65

• The Slovak judiciary took on a number of important cases in 2021 stemming from high-profile corruption allegations. However, relationships within the judiciary were shattered by disagreements over proposals for the administrative-territorial reform of the court system.
• The current government aspired to make judicial reform a flagship project. In January, Justice Minister Mária Kolíková presented the first proposal for the reorganization of the system of courts of law, or the “court map.” The proposal would entail canceling some district and regional courts: in particular, regional courts would be transformed from general courts of law to courts of appeal, and their number would be reduced from eight to three. The proposal, though technical in nature, also aimed to break up clientelistic networks related to the judiciary and rebalancing its power vis-à-vis the executive branch. It provoked a storm of reaction in the affected cities, particularly among judges who would be obliged to commute to the new court seats.66 Pressure from the legal profession continued throughout the year, with a series of petitions and campaigns criticizing the proposed court reorganization.67 Some political elites as well as the judicial establishment sided with the judges.68 As a result, in September, Minister Kolíková announced that she would divide the reorganization into four phases to avoid the possibility of having the entire proposal dismissed by the parliament.69 Nevertheless, the project remained stalled at year’s end.
• Similarly, the process for establishing the newly created Supreme Administrative Court (NSS) turned out to be a bumpy road for the Justice Ministry after it decided to condition the recruitment of judges on entry interviews. Jurists specializing in administrative law, particularly members of the pre-existing Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court (NS), refused to go through the interviews, perhaps from fear of exposure, and boycotted the process. As a consequence, a suitable candidate for the court chair withdrew his candidacy, and the entire process suffered from a lack of applicants.70 Therefore, in August, when the NSS started to work, nine of the court’s thirty judicial posts were still vacant.71
• In June, the Supreme Court, in its capacity as an appellate court, canceled the previous exculpation of Marián Kočner, the suspected mastermind in the murder of journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová in 2018.72 The justices argued that the first-instance court had failed to properly consider available evidence, among other findings. The case will be reconsidered by the Special Criminal Court.73 In the meantime, Kočner was given a 19-year prison sentence in another case related to counterfeiting bills of exchange.74

• Corruption cases, as well as the political consequences of corruption investigations (see “National Democratic Governance”), had a major impact on Slovak democracy in 2021. These anticorruption efforts were also complicated by conflicts between state institutions.
• Public procurement reform was the priority for We Are Family since it informed one of the ruling party’s flagship initiatives, building infrastructure for accessible housing. During the year, civil society, the private sector, the Supreme Office of Control (NKÚ), municipalities, experts, and some coalition partners consistently criticized75 the reform for its lack of economic viability and for creating space for corruption.76 NKÚ, in particular, criticized the proposal as constraining the office’s powers in order to streamline the procurement process.77 Anticorruption NGOs focused on the potentially detrimental effects of raising the exemption threshold for public tenders.78 A compromise proposal was drafted in May between the NKÚ and Deputy PM Holý, who was in charge of the reform,79 and the parliament passed the amended bill in October.80
• In February, the parliament elected Special Prosecutor Daniel Lipšic to succeed the legally embattled Dušan Kováčik, who was already in pretrial detention.81 Lipšic, a senior defense lawyer and former politician, was a political nominee of the ruling coalition, particularly the leading OĽaNO party, and considered a political check on Maroš Žilinka, the We Are Family nominee for Prosecutor General. Some in the legal community objected that Lipšic was not a prosecutor at the time of his election. Also, some politicians doubted the wisdom of electing an openly political candidate to the position.82 In fact, the differences between Lipšic and Žilinka emerged almost immediately in their approaches to high-profile corruption cases.
• In April, former Special Prosecutor Dušan Kováčik was formally charged with conspiracy and corruption.83 In September, after eleven months of pretrial detention, the Special Criminal Court convicted and condemned Kováčik to a 14-year prison sentence and forfeiture of property.84 This was Slovakia’s first case of property forfeiture for a corruption conviction.
• Two years after its creation, the Whistleblower Protection Office (ÚOO) found a leader in Zuzana Dlugošová, who was appointed to head the body in February, after which it was finally able to commence its work.85
• There was an overwhelming number of suspected cases of political corruption, fraud, and embezzlement investigated in 2021, including into the previous management of the Slovak Land Fund (SPF), Agricultural Paying Agency (PPA), and State Material Reserves Administration (SŠHR). The first two cases related to embezzlement of EU agricultural subsidies and the latter to general fraud in purchasing state supplies, including personal protective equipment (PPE) and respirators in the first stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.86
• The more consequential cases sparked clashes within law enforcement institutions as well as among political elites and activated efforts to undermine the integrity of the investigations. In January, NAKA arrested František Imrecze, former head of the Financial Administration, for multiple cases of alleged fraud in state IT tenders under previous governments.87 Imrecze was the most senior political nominee of the former ruling Smer-SD, accused in the “Toll Taker” case.88 Alongside him, Jozef Brhel, an influential entrepreneur and oligarch allegedly linked to Smer-SD, was charged as complicit in the schemes.89 This was the first time an oligarch from former PM Fico’s immediate circle was charged. In August, the same investigation brought the arrest of another oligarch and personal friend of Fico’s, Miroslav Výboh.90 Výboh’s testimony, however, suggested that one of the bribes was paid to Fico’s rival, former PM Peter Pellegrini, the country’s most popular politician and leader of HLAS, which splintered from Smer-SD in 2020.91 Pellegrini was alleged to have accepted a bribe of €150,000 when he was the state secretary in the Finance Ministry.92 Finally, repercussions of the investigation led to the accusation that Peter Kažimír, former Finance Minister and current Governor of the National Bank, had helped facilitate bribes as well.93
• These developments sharpened conflicts between the ruling coalition and the opposition, who interpreted the anticorruption investigations as a tool for eliminating the opposition. When the coalition appointee for head of the SIS, Vladimír Pčolinský, was arrested on corruption charges based on testimony from cooperating suspects, similar conflicts over investigation integrity took shape among Pčolinský’s We Are Family and other coalition parties.94
• In August, Prosecutor General Žilinka used a special provision in the law to stop several investigations on the grounds that they were illegal, and a number of accused were released from pretrial detention, including Pčolinský.95 Žilinka accused Slovak Police Force President Peter Kovařík of misconduct when he allegedly interrupted an action of the Bureau of the Inspection Service against NAKA, after which Kovařík resigned.96 In September, the bureau arrested four senior NAKA investigators on accusations that they had doctored evidence in sensitive anticorruption cases.97 The charges, however, were canceled by the Bratislava Regional Court.98 The arrests pushed the ruling parties to establish a working group to prevent institutional conflicts and restore public trust in the rule of law.99

Author: Peter Učeň is a political scientist and former democracy assistance worker.