Eurasia Press & News
Elsewhere in the region, ECHR rules against Poland in surveillance case; Slovakia’s most popular politics show taken off the air; and as EU election polls narrow, Fidesz resorts to disinformation about EU conscription.
An informal two-day meeting of 32 NATO foreign ministers kicked off on Thursday in Prague, with the main goal of laying the groundwork and preparing for the official Alliance summit which will be held in Washington next July. Described by the Czech authorities as the largest NATO event organised in the country since the Prague summit of 2002, this week’s meeting will also commemorate 25 years of Czech membership and 75 years since the foundation of the Alliance. With the war in Ukraine and continued military support to Kyiv high on the agenda, several debates and bilateral meetings will be held on the sidelines of the main negotiations at the Foreign Ministry’s Cernin Palace, including with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken less than a year after Prague and Washington signed a defence treaty to enhance military cooperation. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with PM Petr Fiala and thanked Czechia for its substantial contributions to the Alliance and its significant aid to Ukraine, including the Czech-led ammunition initiative which is providing more artillery shells for Ukraine, with deliveries expected soon. “It’s really making a difference,” he said. President Petr Pavel – himself a former chairman of the NATO military committee – will award the former Norwegian PM, whose term as head of the alliance ends in September, with the Order of Tomas Garigue Masaryk 3rd Class, one of the highest Czech distinctions. Diplomat Barbara Karpetova described to local media the tough requirements of organising such a large-scale meeting with multiple delegations, a task she likened to planning for “a small Olympics”. The NATO meeting followed a dinner on Tuesday evening hosted by Fiala for several European leaders to discuss securing more munitions for Ukraine. The dinner ended with the announcement that a Czech-led initiative to buy artillery shells on global markets had so far raised 1.6 billion euros, with the shipments of the first rounds to Ukraine expected in the next few days.
In an interview with notorious local disinformation platform Parlamentni Listy, former Czech president Milos Zeman stated that, “sooner or later”, Czechia will experience the same kind of “politically motivated” assassination attempt as happened against the Slovak PM Robert Fico two weeks ago. “There are a lot of crazy people among the Czech population, and some of them are even equipped with firearms,” the former head of state said, going on to accuse – as a number of top Slovak government officials have done over the past two weeks – journalists, the media and “some politicians” of being at the root of the problem and responsible for the climate of hatred, division and growing polarisation. “I don’t believe in the myth of the lone gunman,” Zeman continued, nevertheless criticising the security detail of his “real friend” for acting unprofessionally during the attack. Zeman, whose second presidential term ended last year but who continues to give his two cents on daily events, has long been known for his divisive rhetoric and disparaging comments against his opponents or critics, including politicians, reporters and activists.
According to a report by Seznam Zpravy published this week, traces of cocaine were found, in January 2023, in the men’s bathroom of parliament’s lower house after a late-night session. The discovery, made by members of the building’s security service as they heard strange but vaguely familiar regular tapping sounds from inside the cubicle, and evidence found on the scene were later brought back to the headquarters of the Protective Service of the Police of the Czech Republic for further testing. Although confirmed this week by a spokesman for this specific security agency – in charge among other things of the protection of constitutional officials – the slightly embarrassing finding was kept silent for over a year and a half and was neither made public nor shared with head of the Chamber of Deputies, Marketa Pekarova Adamova, nor any other official. Because the amount of cocaine found was very small and there appeared to be no threat at the time, “there was no need to inform anyone about this discovery,” a spokesman said, adding that to their knowledge no similar incident has since occurred. Some politicians have already expressed their anger at being kept in the dark for so long, and the General Inspectorate of Security Forces (GIBS) is still looking into whether police officials acted properly at the time, and whether they truly did everything they could to find out the identity of the parliamentary delinquent – which still remains unknown at this time.
ECHR rules against Poland in surveillance case; Polish soldiers in Ukraine?
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled against Poland in a case in which five Polish citizens claimed uncontrolled surveillance by the police and intelligence agencies breached their right to privacy. The court agreed that the access of these institutions to private data is too broad and there is no effective system of oversight over the surveillance. The plaintiffs, a lawyer and human rights groups staff, filed the case after the Polish parliament passed in 2016 changes to the police and anti-terrorism laws that strengthened the authorities’ surveillance powers. The five complained that, in line with the new legislation, authorities could monitor their telecommunications and collect data concerning them without their knowledge. The agencies also have no obligation to inform citizens they were put under surveillance even after the operation ends. Finally, the courts approving the surveillance were mostly doing it automatically, while only a low rate of the operations actually led to criminal cases; according to Panoptykon Foundation, the police actually got evidence later used in criminal cases in only 13 per cent of the 9,781 times they spied on citizens in 2022. “Today’s ruling indicates that there is an urgent need for a systemic reform of the Polish laws concerning surveillance,” Malgorzata Macza-Pacholak, the lawyer representing the five plaintiffs, said in response to the ruling. “Changes are needed when it comes to operational control, the retention of telecommunications data or the use of the so-called anti-terrorism law.”
Speaking on Tuesday to Gazeta Wyborcza and other European media, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorki said that Poland should not rule out sending troops to Ukraine. “We should leave [Vladimir] Putin guessing as to our intentions,” the minister added, but gave no other details about what any potential sending of Polish troops might involve. In February, French President Emmanuel Macron floated the idea of sending NATO troops to Ukraine, leading to a strong response from Russia invoking the threat of a nuclear attack.
Taken off the air; Vietnam’s new president still faces charges in Slovakia
Markiza, the most watched television channel in Slovakia, decided to suspend its Sunday political program, Na Telo, which has long topped the ratings among Slovak political programs. Initially, the channel announced that it would cancel most of the program’s June episodes due to production problems. The ruling coalition headed by PM Robert Fico’s Smer party considers the private channel an enemy, and its politicians have boycotted Na Telo for weeks. Markiza has not confirmed whether the show will return after the summer break. Last Sunday, however, presenter Michal Kovacic told viewers on live TV that Slovakia is currently experiencing an attempt to ‘Orbanise’ our media, referring to the takeover and closure of Hungary’s independent media by the government of Viktor Orban. “The future of [public broadcaster] RTVS is being debated in public, but this attempt is actually taking place everywhere. It happens quietly, though,” Kovacic said. In response, Markiza denied it would ever try to censor or pressure its journalists. Yet the day after Kovacic’s bald statement, the channel announced the immediate end of the program, and Kovacic was told to go home. Because he heads the union, Kovacic cannot be easily dismissed. Markiza journalists have reportedly been under pressure since the start of the year, when the management changed and, against the will of its reporters, tried to avoid making too-harsh criticism of the government in the channel’s news reporting. Last year, Fico threatened Markiza, which is owned by Czech investment group PPF, in a video. It wasn’t always like this: back in the nineties, Fico defended Markiza against attacks coming from the semi-authoritarian premier Vladimir Meciar. It is not clear what position, if any, the investment group’s owner has on the issue.
An awkward international situation has developed after Vietnam’s To Lam was elected president on May 22, because the former public security minister is facing charges, alongside other Vietnamese citizens, in an abduction case that allegedly took place in Slovakia in July 2017. The charges relate to the Vietnamese regime’s alleged kidnapping of a former Vietnamese communist official and businessman, Trinh Xuan Thanh, from Germany. The kidnapping is believed to have been successful thanks to covert assistance from Slovakia, which involved providing the Vietnamese delegation led by Lam with a government plane that flew the Vietnamese to Moscow. Another charged man is Quang Le Hong, who served as PM Fico’s adviser back then. Slovak police believe that the abduction would not have worked out had it not been for him. After the kidnapping, he got a prominent job at the Slovak embassy in Hanoi. Defence Minister Robert Kalinak of the Smer party, who served as interior minister in 2017, said on Wednesday that there is no proof the kidnapping of the Vietnamese businessman occurred on Slovak soil. He also denied any involvement in the case, despite having had a quick meeting with Lam at the time the man was being kidnapped. Kalinak also mocked the police for charging Lam who, he said, has not even been charged in Germany. Kalinak, moreover, rejected cutting ties with Vietnam. “Never,” he said.
Fidesz spreads disinfo about EU conscription; pulling Varhelyi’s chair away
Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party continued to show it is not above indulging in a spot of disinformation spreading. Two weeks before the EU elections in which PM Viktor Orban faces a new challenger in the form of Peter Magyar, Fidesz politicians reached a new low by accusing the EU with preparing for mass mobilisation and sending Europe’s youth (both men and women, apparently) off to the war in Ukraine. Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, who revels in his “close friendship” with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, said in a Facebook message that the “latest crazy idea from Brussels is to reintroduce military service”. If this happens, he said, then soldiers would probably be sent to Ukraine from the immediate neighbourhood, meaning that “Hungarian young men and women will have to fight in a war that is not ours”. The reality is, needless to say, somewhat different. The idea of conscription stems from comments made by CSU politician and chairman of the European People’s Party Manfred Weber in an interview but was solely related to Germany, though the idea was immediately rejected by German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius. Weber himself admitted he was not thinking of reintroducing military service again, but of involving young people in some form of military or civilian service for a year to ease the Bundeswehr’s manpower shortage. Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, jumped on the disinfo bandwagon, telling a press conference: “The declaration by Manfred Weber, president of the European People’s Party, about introducing compulsory military service in Europe for both men and women, creates a qualitatively new situation.” Fact-checking news site Lakmusz contacted the EPP office in Brussels and was told that Weber never supported or even mentioned Europe-wide military service, while independent news site Nepszava asked the EU’s foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, about it, who replied, clearly taken aback by the suggestion, that “the European Union cannot introduce compulsory military service. We are far from having such powers. We are not even thinking about it.” Nevertheless, the idea of sending Hungarian men and women to the war, despite a lack of evidence for such a thing, spread like wildfire on social media and pro-government news sites in a last-ditch attempt to mobilise Fidesz voters.
The Hungarian government again clashed with its EU and NATO allies this week over the disbursement of the next tranche of military aid to Ukraine. Sources in Brussels said European countries are becoming increasingly irritated by Hungary’s blocking of military aid to Ukraine, which is seen as a blackmail strategy to release some of Hungary’s frozen EU funds. Politico wrote that Hungary’s chances of getting a serious portfolio in the next European Commission are now slim. The speculation was that Orban had his eye on an influential portfolio like trade or competition, but Janos Boka, his minister of European affairs told BIRN in a background conversation recently, “the prime minister is happy with the current commissioner for neighbourhood and enlargement, Oliver Varhelyi”. Now it seems Orban will have to settle with less, as both Varhelyi’s position and Hungary’s grip on the portfolio are under threat. It is difficult to imagine the EU Commission will embrace Varhelyi again when jobs are handed out for its next term. He is seen as not just a Trojan horse for the Hungarian government, but also has a severe problem controlling his temper. Further, the portfolio of enlargement has gained in significance lately with the likelihood of accepting at least one new member country by 2030 and with Ukraine starting accession negotiations – a step Orban would most probably try to undermine if Varhelyi retained his position.
