The most significant geopolitical event of 2024 is the election of Donald Trump as the President of the USA, according to Peter Žiga (Hlas-SD), the vice-chairman of the National Council of the Slovak Republic, entrusted with its management. In an interview with TASR, Žiga also emphasized that Europe is losing competitiveness compared to the rest of the world. According to him, Slovakia will continue to be affected by ongoing war conflicts in the world.
“The election of President Trump will affect the life of the whole world for the next four years, because he has a different vision than the previous president and perhaps also a different vision of solving conflicts in the world,” he told TASR. According to him, Trump also has a different view of the economic world, that is, the relations of America as the largest economy in the world towards Europe, China, South America and Russia. According to Žig, his election will also have an impact in terms of security measures. “If Trump has a different vision of how NATO works than his predecessor had, we will have to respond significantly to that,” he said.
Žiga also noted that Europe is losing competitiveness compared to the rest of the world. “The leader of economic movements, i.e. industry, has always been Europe, and Europe’s competitiveness is disappearing. From the pedestal that Europe had for many decades, perhaps centuries, within the framework of the organization of the world, it is coming to a halt,” he concluded, saying that if Europe does not respond to this with adequate procedures, he fears that the European Union is in danger of disintegrating.
According to Žiga, the life of the inhabitants of Slovakia is also significantly affected by war conflicts. He recalled the war conflict in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Gaza Strip. “This determines other things that our economy must adapt to,” he said. According to him, the issue of gas supplies is topical. “If the gas doesn’t come from the east, it will have to come from some other part of the world, but at different prices. And that will affect wallets, to which the government will have to react,” he stated. According to him, war conflicts also have an impact on migration movements.
He also pointed to political movements within Europe, such as the election results in Georgia and Romania, where the democratic presidential elections there were declared invalid by the constitutional court. “We are talking about Romania, which is a member of the European Union, it is a nation of 20 million people, where when the candidate who was wanted did not win, the constitutional court annulled the presidential election,” he stated that this is an unprecedented thing. “When an election campaign is conducted, various means are used within the permitted election campaign, but the vote of the voter and direct democracy is the highest thing that can be in democracy as an institution,” pointed out Žiga. According to him, this event can have a negative effect on the development of democracy in the world.
