Eurasia Press & News
Elsewhere, Czechs finally have law to protect whistleblowers; Poland adopts amended version of a panel to investigate ‘Russian influence’; and Slovaks don’t want the next government to help Ukraine militarily.
US-Hungarian relations were in the news this week. After Washington imposed sanctions on four top Bosnian Serb officials for undermining a US-backed peace deal that ended the Balkan country’s 1990s war, Hungary’s Foreign Ministry announced it would stand by the democratically elected leaders of Bosnia and Herzegovina and called for genuine dialogue. State Secretary for Security Policy and Energy Security Peter Sztaray said in a statement that the stability of the Western Balkans is in Hungary’s national interest and experience shows “sanctions against the Western Balkans have always failed and have only caused trouble.” The background to the spat is that in June lawmakers in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska voted to suspend the rulings of the country’s Constitutional Court – a vote initiated by Milorad Dodik, the separatist president of this part of Bosnia one of Hungarian PM Viktor Orban’s last remaining allies in Europe.
This wasn’t the only conflict between the US and Hungary this week. On Tuesday, citing concerns over Hungary’s simplified naturalisation process that has granted Hungarian citizenship to nearly 1 million people between 2011 and 2020 without adequate security measures in place to verify their identities, Washington imposed visa restrictions on Hungarian citizens, halving the validity period under the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) to one year, and only allowing single visits to the US. The US embassy said in a statement it had made extensive efforts over many years to avoid this outcome and resolve longstanding security issues arising from Hungary’s simplified naturalisation process, but “the Hungarian government has opted not to address the concerns”. The restrictions came a day after the ruling Fidesz party boycotted a parliamentary session called by opposition parties to vote on Sweden’s NATO accession.
After 17 months, the Hungarian government abolished price freezes from August 1. It also introduced mandatory promotions for certain goods. This means that shops are only allowed to sell products previously subject to official prices at the promotional purchase price. The next day, one of the biggest supermarket chains in the country, Auchan, introduced a quantitative restriction on products previously available at official prices. Food inflation is so high in the country that many Hungarians travel to neighbouring countries, most notably Slovakia and Romania, to do their shopping, Hungarian media reported.
New law to protect whistleblowers; speeding Czechs
A new Whistleblower Act took effect in the Czech Republic on Tuesday. The legislation requires companies to establish internal mechanisms that allow employees to report illegal practices, and to follow up reports promptly. There are also safeguards designed to prevent false reports. Advocates say that the legislation will help companies by quickly and quietly identifying potential sources of financial, legal or reputational damage. Transparency advocates, however, have criticised the government for taking so long to deliver the new law. Having missed an EU deadline to introduce whistleblower protection by December 2021, Prague is required to pay a fine of around 64 million koruna (2.7 million euros). The critics also bemoan the fact that measures allowing anonymity for whistleblowers was cut from the legislation. Anyone spooked for some reason by the idea of revealing their identity as they report on their employer, superior or co-workers will have to use the Justice Ministry’s portal for reporting illegal activities.
A campaign to reduce the speed limit in Prague to 30 km/h enraged so many Czechs who seem to equate their cars (although only if they guzzle fossil fuels) with “freedom” that it has led to activists blocking roads. The reaction of PM Petr Fiala, leader of the “anti-populism” coalition government? Let’s Increase the speed limit on the country’s motorways to 150 km/h! As this commentator noted, arguments against this move – which would in actual fact only see the speed limit increased from the current 130km/h in a few selected spots – are not only the safety and environmental concerns. For instance, with war raging to the east, inflation still sky high, and disinformation playing havoc with political and societal relations, surely the government has more important issues to deal with? But does that miss the point? Maybe the idea is not to speed up transport (which clearly won’t happen), but to tell voters that Fiala and his conservative ODS party is happy to stick it to annoying “woke” campaigners and anyone else (are you listening Brussels?) that wants to mess with Czech cars.
Poland adopts modified ‘Russia influence’ panel; minimum wage hikes set for 2024
On Wednesday, Poland adopted an amended version of a law establishing a panel to investigate “Russian influence”, the initial version of which caused an outcry at home and abroad as it was widely seen as targeting the opposition. In May, President Andrzej Duda signed off on legislation to create a commission controlled by the ruling PiS party that would be able to exclude from political life those individuals deemed to have been influenced by Russian interests. Since PiS came to power in 2015, it has passed several laws that have had the effect of silencing critics, including in the media and judicial sectors, and coming just months before a general election, this law was widely seen as a way to target opposition leader Donald Tusk, who polls suggest has a reasonable a chance of becoming the next PM. Under the revised version, a person whom the committee finds to be under Russian influence would not be banned from holding public positions, but will instead be labelled as a person who has succumbed to Russian influence and cannot be guaranteed to work in the public interest. The nine-member committee will also now comprise experts instead of lawmakers and senators. Critics like the Venice Commission argue that even with the proposed changes, the law still threatens the fairness of this year’s election and should be scrapped.
Elsewhere this week, the government approved a plan to increase the country’s minimum wage two times next year, another policy designed to enhance PiS’s working class credentials ahead of the October election. The minimum wage will rise to 4,242 zloty (950 euros) a month from January 2024, followed by a further hike to PLN 4,300 zloty (965 euros) from July 1 of that year, according to a government announcement. The average gross Polish monthly wage in June was 7,335 zloty, Statistics Poland said. Wages in Poland have come under scrutiny recently, given the cost-of-living crisis and with regard to the tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war next door. A June survey by the International Rescue Committee found that more than a half of Ukrainian respondents in Poland said they had been asked to work below the minimum wage, while a VoxEU/CEPR survey in July found that the war has had a negative impact on the wages offered to Ukrainian workers, regardless of work location and job profile.
Slovaks don’t want next government to back Ukraine militarily; more police needed
Two Zuzana 2 self-propelled howitzers were sent to Ukraine earlier this week. They were produced by the Slovak firm Konstrukta-Defence. These howitzers are the first two of 16 howitzers produced for Ukraine thanks to a 90-million-euro project funded by Norway, Denmark and Germany. Although Slovakia has supported Ukraine in various ways, including with military equipment, the latest poll shows that most Slovaks, 51.5 per cent, do not want the next government to continue helping its neighbour militarily. It is mostly women, less educated people, members of the Hungarian minority, and voters of the extremist party Republika, the nationalist party SNS and the former ruling party Smer that oppose further military aid to Ukraine.
Slovakia has fewer police officers than in previous years. There are 20,500 of them, which is a 6 per cent decrease compared to 2019. Still, their number per inhabitant is comparable to Czechia and slightly higher than in Poland and Hungary, the Value for Money Unit under the Finance Ministry has found. Unlike other countries, the structure of police personnel is different in Slovakia and few civilian employees work in the police. Slovakia is also the only V4 country that has got a railway police. Tasks of the toll police are performed by civilian institutions outside the police in many countries, the Unit’s analysis on how to make the police more efficient points out. The analysis also suggests that in traffic police departments part of the competences of police officers should be performed by civilian employees. Police officers would no longer have to issue, for example, driving licences. To increase the number of police officers, which municipalities have called for, citizens can join the police from the age of 18 from the beginning of July, instead of 21. In 2022, the average salary of a police officer was 2,085 euros. Only 46 per cent of the Slovak population trusts the police.
