Public authorities are obliged to provide broadcasters, newspapers, internet news portals and press agencies with information about their activities on the basis of equality. In accordance with the Act on Media Services and the Act on Publications, the public has the right to “true, timely and comprehensive” information.
This follows from the constitutionally guaranteed right to information. Well, the idea that he will violate the constitution or the law probably won’t scare the government, but Fico’s threat is empty anyway. If the government were to completely stop holding press conferences, or at least statements, it would not only harm the media, which it believes helps Progressive Slovakia, but especially itself.
Almost 33,000 people watched Fico’s press statement yesterday on Smer’s YouTube channel. The Facebook account of the strongest government party had even more viewers, up to 50,000. Newspapers are no longer used only by journalists to supply them with quotes for articles and evening news shots. Thanks to social networks, parties use them to communicate with voters.
A prime example of politicization
No sane politician will voluntarily deprive himself of such an audience. Well, we understand why the journalists at the government office are obstructing Fico. If he had let them speak yesterday, they could have reminded him of what they later told Robert Kaliňák: that it is different with Beneš’s decrees, as Fico claims. Péter Magyar demands “repeal of the law that threatens Hungarians in Slovakia with imprisonment”.
It was not introduced by Edvard Beneš in 1945, but by the National Council in December 2025 with a sticker to the “highlander” amendment to the Criminal Code. Originally, however, it was not directed against Slovak Hungarians, but against Progressive Slovakia, which opened the topic of land confiscations based on Beneš’s decrees in southern Slovakia.
When Fico talks about the purposeful politicization of criminal law, this is a prime example. Such an amendment to the Criminal Code should not only hinder Hungarian politicians, but above all us in Slovakia. It is an inadmissible interference with freedom of expression and a violation of the principle of criminal law ultima ratio. Hopefully, the Constitutional Court, which decides on the amendment, will see it this way.
At the end of January, the police detained the municipal politician of the Hungarian Alliance, Örs Orosz, because he was wearing a vest with the inscription “I question Beneš’s decrees” at a protest in Bratislava, media. Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and then opposition leader Péter Magyar called for his release.
A useless paragraph
However, the words about detention are probably exaggerated. The police asked him to take off his vest and when he did not obey, they took him aside. This is not a detention or any other procedural act. In addition, she apparently did not initiate any proceedings against him. However, this is not the only example of this provision not working.
Orosz, lawyer János Fiala-Butora and activist Attila Studenbeck launched a petition against the principle of collective guilt and filed a criminal complaint against themselves based on the section on questioning the peace arrangement after the Second World War. The police him because it is not clear what should be criminal and these opinions are protected by freedom of speech.
According to the authors of the petition, it became clear that the law is unenforceable and the government was only concerned with intimidation, not with its real application. “The government has achieved that its position on Beneš’s decrees is already being questioned by state authorities,” Fiala-Butora told the Napunk portal. Hopefully, the Constitutional Court will mend relations with Hungary and throw the entire unnecessary amendment into the trash.
Of course, Magyar is also asking Fico for guarantees that “confiscations of lands of fellow Hungarian citizens in Slovakia based on Beneš decrees and the principle of collective guilt” will not take place in the future. This could seem to us like interference in the internal affairs of Slovakia, but the practices of the Slovak Land Fund in this context, as well as constitutional lawyers.
Just rule normally
According to Marek Káčer and Vincent Bujňák, Beneš’s decrees are in conflict with the constitution, especially with provisions that grant basic rights and freedoms to everyone regardless of origin and with the protection of property rights. They thus remain valid, but have lost their effectiveness and cannot be applied in legal disputes. So it’s not about what Magyar tells us.
We ourselves should care about the observance of basic rights or principles of legal certainty. If state authorities act in violation of the law and apply the law incorrectly, it should concern the Prime Minister even without phone calls from a future colleague. And that is the point of Fico’s entire performance yesterday.
If he would focus less on what the media is doing wrong, what the Hungarian prime minister is up to, what malice President Zelenskyy still has in store, or how to punish a judge for doing her job, maybe he would manage better. If he were not distracted by useless things, he would perhaps be less nervous.
Focus only on what you have, Mr. Prime Minister. Dictating to the media what to report on, speculating about Ukraine’s intentions that may not happen at all, or intimidating an independent judiciary is certainly not the role of the prime minister. For Beneš’s decrees, it is enough to follow the constitution. And it is enough for the prime minister to govern normally and not to always be concerned only with himself.
