Slovakia: Restructuring the rule of law and the media landscape

with: Jana Krescanko Dibaková, Zuzana Petková, Michal Vašečka, Soňa Weissová

2024/25 Nebenan Gespräch

In the fall of 2022, left-wing populist Robert Fico once again became prime minister of Slovakia in a three-party alliance. With his left-wing populist, right-wing nationalist government, he has since been systematically restructuring the state – reforms in the areas of criminal law and in the media landscape as well as his corrupt personnel policy have led to EU-wide criticism and numerous demonstrations in the country in recent months. In short presentations, Jana Krescanko Dibaková, journalist and television presenter, Zuzana Petková, head of the Stop Corruption Foundation, sociologist Michal Vašečka and radio journalist Soňa Weissová will share their observations on Fico’s approach and the consequences for liberal democracy. This will be followed by a discussion moderated by Kilian Kirchgeßner, journalist and correspondent for the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Duration: ca. 2 h
Language: Slovakian with German simultaneous translation

Zuzana Petková studied journalism at Comenius University in Bratislava. She worked as a domestic and foreign news editor for the newspapers Pravda, SME and Hospodárske noviny and from 2013 wrote for the weekly newspaper Trend, where she was deputy editor-in-chief. Zuzana Petková has been involved in investigative journalism for 20 years and is one of Slovakia’s best-known investigative journalists. She has been the director of the Stop Corruption Foundation since August 2018. The foundation was established by Slovakian entrepreneurs Miroslav Trnka and Michal Blaha with the aim of curbing corruption and its destructive effects on the quality of life in Slovakia.

Doc. Michal Vašečka, PhD., Director of the Bratislava Policy Institute, his research focuses on topics such as ethnicity, race, migration studies, populism, extremism, social movements and civil society. He has been a visiting scholar at the New School University in New York, University of London, Georgetown University in Washington DC and University of Oxford. In 2006, Michal Vašečka founded the Center for Ethnicity and Culture Research. Since 2012, he has been a representative of the Slovak Republic in the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI). In 2018, Michal Vašečka was awarded the prize for special merits in the field of human rights by the Slovak Minister of Justice.

Soňa Weissová, Slovakian radio journalist, worked for the public broadcaster RTVS from 2009 to 2024. She worked in various areas and led a team of journalists and correspondents for the broadcaster’s foreign news service since the beginning of the war of aggression in Ukraine. She was actively involved in the defense of public broadcasting against state interference.

Jana Krescanko Dibáková began her career in 2002 as a reporter at TV JOJ, Slovakia’s second-largest commercial television station. From 2020, she was the presenter of Na hrane (On the Edge), one of the country’s best-known political discussion programs. In the spring of 2024, after the parliamentary elections of 2023, she publicly opposed the coalition parties’ prevention strategies, which included refusing to participate in the program and blocking discussions with other presenters who asked critical questions. Faced with increasing political pressure on Slovakian broadcasters, she decided to step down from her role at TV JOJ to avoid perceived interference during the election campaign period. She announced her resignation after the presidential elections in 2024. In September 2024, she moved to the well-known SME newspaper and started a video program called Aréna s Janou Krescanko Dibákovou (Arena with Jana Krescanko Dibáková), in which she conducts interviews and discussions with politicians and public figures. She is married and the mother of an almost 13-year-old son and a 10-year-old daughter.

Kilian Kirchgeßner reports as a correspondent on the Czech Republic and Slovakia. He works for numerous radio stations, including Deutschlandfunk and ORF, as well as numerous magazines in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Axel Springer Prize (2007), the European Union Young Journalist Award (2008), the Johnny Klein Prize for German-Czech Understanding (2018 and 2023) and the German-Czech Journalism Prize four times.