Slovakia

Slovakia has been governed since October 2023 by a coalition of Smer, Hlas and the Slovak National Party under Prime Minister Robert Fico, whose criminal justice reforms have faced public protests and constitutional challenges. On 11 February 2026, in case PL. ÚS 2/2026, the Constitutional Court suspended a provision of Act No. 416/2025 Coll. restricting the admissibility of evidence from cooperating witnesses, following a petition by 51 opposition members of parliament. Related challenges by the Prosecutor General and the Specialised Criminal Court were also accepted for examination.

A referendum on 4 July 2026 on abolishing lifetime payments to former political leaders and restoring the Special Prosecutor’s Office and the National Criminal Agency failed on turnout of 16.1 per cent, below the required 50 per cent.

Reporters Without Borders ranks Slovakia 37th of 180 in its 2026 World Press Freedom Index, scoring 72.71 against 38th and 71.93 in 2025, with its political indicator falling from 60th to 64th. It reports continued political hostility towards journalists, attacks on critical media and abusive lawsuits.

The European Commission’s rule of law country chapter of 17 July 2026 found no progress on its recommendation concerning the independence of public service media. Although Act No. 256/2025 Coll. introduced transparency requirements for state advertising, neither the allocation register nor the unified media-ownership register is functional or publicly available. The Commission also recorded the controversial dismissal of the media regulator’s Director in January 2026.

A proposal by Slovak National Party members to replace the Council for Media Services with a single-headed National Media Office passed first reading in February 2026 and was withdrawn in September. Press freedom organisations had objected in April, noting that Slovakia is in pre-infringement dialogue with the European Commission under the European Media Freedom Act.

State Media Monitor maps two Slovak outlets: Slovak Television and Radio (STVR), State-Controlled (SC), and the News Agency of the Slovak Republic (TASR), Independent State-Funded and State-Managed (ISFM).

STVR replaced RTVS on 1 July 2024. Its nine-member Council is appointed by the Minister of Culture and Parliament, and in April 2026 it elected Peter Benčurík, a senior Ministry of Culture official, as chair. About sixty employees were dismissed in March 2026, including journalists critical of the management. MEMO 98 monitoring found that government and governing parties received 71.3 per cent of political coverage in STVR’s main television news in February 2026, and that STVR was the only broadcaster examined where favourable coverage of the government exceeded unfavourable coverage. The media regulator opened several proceedings concerning impartiality, while the compatibility of the governing statute with European law remains before the Court of Justice. Its predecessor was classified Captured Public and State-Managed in 2022 and 2023; the entry has been State-Controlled since 2024.

TASR has a different governance structure: Parliament elects four members of its five-member Board and employees elect the fifth, and its governing Act expressly guarantees editorial independence. A statutory state contribution introduced in 2024 now supplies more than half its ordinary financing. The agency was classified Independent State-Managed/Owned through 2024 and has been recorded as ISFM since 2025. No independent systematic assessment establishing sustained government-directed editorial coverage there was found for this review.

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