Eurasia Press & News
Slovakia’s intelligence chief, Pavol Gaspar, is facing allegations of academic fraud after an investigation by the daily Sme found that his 2011 law thesis on corruption was largely plagiarised. The thesis, written at the private Pan-European University in Bratislava, lifted about two-thirds of its content verbatim from four published sources, including work by leading jurist Jozef Centes. Centes, who once controversially lost out on the post of prosecutor general despite being elected by parliament, confirmed that Gaspar had copied large sections of his 2006 book The Fight Against Corruption in Slovakia and the European Union. “It is unacceptable for a student to use another’s work without proper citation,” he said, describing the practice as “academic fraud” under Slovak law. Other parts of the dissertation drew on legal commentaries and academic articles, while its bibliography included sources never cited in the text. Sme noted that whole chapters, including footnotes, had been reproduced without alteration. Questions have also been raised over Gaspar’s earlier bachelor thesis, also on corruption, which is not publicly accessible. Gaspar denied any wrongdoing, insisting both his theses were properly examined and defended before a university commission. His father, Tibor Gaspar – deputy speaker of parliament and a former police chief formally charged in a corruption case – defended him, claiming plagiarism applies only when an entire thesis is copied. The university has said it will review the work under the rules in place in 2011. The controversy comes only weeks after Pavol Gaspar made headlines for crashing a yellow Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat, a luxury sports car not declared in his official asset statements. Opposition parties are demanding his dismissal, warning his credibility as head of the Slovak Information Service is compromised. The case adds to a long line of plagiarism scandals involving senior Slovak politicians.
Meanwhile, Slovakia’s parliament narrowly approved a sweeping consolidation package pushed through by Robert Fico’s government after a stormy debate that spilled over into personal clashes. Finance Minister Ladislav Kamenicky of Fico’s Smer party abandoned his speech after opposition politician Igor Matovic confronted him with a “Liar” poster. The opposition boycotted the final vote, while 78 coalition MPs pushed the measures through. The 2.7-billion-euro package combines tax rises with spending cuts. Workers and the self-employed will bear the heaviest load: income tax thresholds are being lowered, health and social contributions raised, and net wages trimmed across pay bands. Public holidays on May 8, September 15 and November 17 are to be scrapped, though Orthodox Christmas was spared. State employees, except doctors and teachers, face a pay freeze, and councils must cut 130 million euros. MPs froze their own pay rises, but ministers’ allowances remain under review. It is not yet clear how ministries themselves will deliver savings, with details postponed until the draft budget in October. The National Bank of Slovakia slashed its growth forecast, warning that austerity will deepen an already fragile outlook. It now expects GDP growth of just 0.8 per cent this year, down from a 1.2 per cent projection in June and far below last year’s 2.1 per cent. Next year growth is set to slow further to 0.5 per cent, compared with a previously expected rebound to 1.6 per cent. NBS Governor Peter Kazimir cited “trade wars, political tensions and fiscal consolidation” as key drags. Inflation is also set to remain among the highest in the Eurozone, with prices forecast to rise 4.2 per cent this year and 3.6 per cent in 2026. Joblessness, now at 5.3 per cent, is expected to climb above 6 per cent. Unions are preparing protests, warning the squeeze will hit workers and small firms hardest.
Thousands protest Hungary govt propaganda; Ukraine ambassador tries to build bridges
Tens of thousands of people gathered on Sunday in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square to protest against government propaganda and hate speech. The demonstration was organised by the independent Loupe Theatre Association, whose central demand was that the government remove political billboards from public spaces. According to the organisers, the tipping point was the latest government campaign that included a billboard depicting opposition leader Peter Magyar and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “two eggs”, suggesting Magyar is aligned with Kyiv or possibly an agent of the country. In the past decade, state-funded billboards have become a key tool for the governing Fidesz party to spread its messages, even in the most remote parts of the country. Besides a ban on billboards, protesters also called for a more compassionate, united and less polarised public discourse, both in politics and on social media. Loupe launched a public initiative calling for a national referendum to ban political billboards entirely, which gathered over 220,000 signatures. “Enough of the hate-mongering,” actor Tamas Lengyel said on stage. “What kind of nation is it where people can’t look each other in the eye? Is there anything more degrading than wishing death upon a fellow citizen for political reasons? Why is this happening?” Other speakers referred to the recent, shocking suicide of the police chief in Hodmezovasarhely, a provincial town in southern Hungary, who allegedly took his own life after a local news site (reportedly close to Transport and Construction Minister Janos Lazar) accused him of neglecting his duties due to an extramarital affair. Fidesz spokesperson Tamas Menczer dismissed the demonstrators as “a bunch of leftist activists”.
Ukraine’s ambassador to Hungary, Fegyir Sandor (Fedir Shandor), told the independent weekly hvg.hu that he is available “24 hours a day” for a meeting with Viktor Orban, though has yet to receive a call from the PM. Fedir, whose father is Hungarian and who hails from the Transcarpathian region, gained fame as a university professor who continued teaching online from the trenches for two years. Appointed ambassador to Budapest in the spring, he sees his mission as building bridges, not only with the Hungarian government but also with Hungarian society. “Relations between the political elites of the two countries may be poor, but not between the two nations,” he said. As an example, he highlighted that over 5,000 Ukrainian children were hosted for short holidays in Hungary between 2024 and 2025, more than in any other Western or Central European country. Fedir expressed hope that the political mood will change after Hungary’s 2026 general election, saying that hostility between two neighbours (who have not had historical grievances before) only serves the interests of one country: Russia. In a particularly strong statement, the ambassador argued that the war in Ukraine will only truly end when Russia collapses from within, whether through internal revolt, as happened after World War I, or through a disintegration like that which followed the Soviet Union’s defeat in Afghanistan.
Poland seeks approval to shoot down Russian jets; buys drones in droves from Taiwan
Already the victim of Russian attempts to test its air defences, Poland is reported to be in the process of amending its law on military deployments abroad to allow its forces to shoot down Russian objects, such as drones, over Ukraine without prior NATO or EU approval. According to Gazeta Wyborcza this week, the draft, submitted by the Polish Defence Ministry in June, is expected to be fast-tracked. In 2022, the previous PiS government amended the law to require approval from NATO, the EU and the foreign country where Polish forces would operate. But a commission for investigating Russian influence later criticised the change, saying it stripped Warsaw of the right to act independently against drones crossing from Ukraine or Belarus. As such, the current government plans to scrap those limits under a “shoot first, ask later” principle, giving the military more flexibility to respond to threats. The move comes as the country’s leadership warned on Monday that Poland would shoot down any enemy aircraft that violated its territory. “I have only one request to the Russian government: If another missile or aircraft enters our space without permission, deliberately or by mistake, and gets shot down and the wreckage falls on NATO territory, please don’t come here to whine about it,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said. “You have been warned.”
Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and Russia’s aggression toward its NATO neighbours, Poland has become the biggest buyer of drones from Taiwan as it looks to strengthen its defence capabilities and reduce reliance on Chinese parts. According to Bloomberg, Poland is now absorbing almost 60 per cent of Taiwan’s drone exports, which expanded this year to about 32 million dollars through August, from almost nothing in the previous years. The next-largest importer of Taiwan’s drones and parts is the US, to which Taiwan sold roughly 7 million dollars’ worth in the same period. Taiwanese drone maker Ahamani told the newswire that Polish demand was so great it was planning to open up a factory there. “In my view, Europe is a very important market in the drone industry – and Poland is a key gateway and base for us,” the company’s CEO, Kung Tzu-chi, was quoted as saying. “With drone companies around the world looking for non-Chinese supply chains, motors and batteries are in short supply.” The use of drones has revolutionised the war in Ukraine, allowing Kyiv to resist the Russian invasion. Russia and NATO have rushed to catch up, with Poland becoming a regional hub for drone production and its armed forces expected to spend PLN 200 million (47 million euros) on the purchase of drones and related training systems this year.
Czech constitutional Court rules on ‘hidden coalitions’; president warns of populist threat
The Czech Constitutional Court on Wednesday unanimously ruled that political parties were free to decide whether to cooperate in “recognised” or “unrecognised” coalitions, and that so-called “hidden coalitions” were not unconstitutional. “We have been given this matter absolute priority,” the court president Josef Baxa said. “We wanted to ensure legal certainty, so that voters can be sure they can exercise their fundamental right to vote in peace.” The verdict, which comes just a little over a week before Czechia is due to hold high-stakes parliamentary elections, rejected the complaint of Volt Czechia, which argued that both the far-right SPD and the Communist-led Stacilo movements – both in league with or comprising several other parties ahead of the October 3-4 ballot – were illegally circumventing electoral rules by posing as a single entity. Under Czech law, individual political parties must receive at least 5 per cent of the votes to send MPs to the lower house of parliament, while two-party coalitions must meet an 8 per cent threshold, and larger ones 11 per cent. While few experts expected the Constitutional Court to take such a drastic step as cancelling the SPD and Stacilo electoral lists, this week’s verdict carries important repercussions, keeping the 5 per cent threshold for the two extremist groupings. Both movements – polling at about 11 and 7 per cent respectively – are seen as potential coalition partners for former PM Andrej Babis’s ANO movement, the election frontrunner by a large margin. “If we quietly accept the norm that it is okay to bend the electoral law and look for loopholes in it, it will ultimately undermine citizens’ trust in the entire political system,” warned lawyer Petra Stupkova, who took part in drafting Volt’s legal complaint. SPD and Stacilo both welcomed the court’s ruling.
In the US this week to attend the UN General Assembly in New York, Czech President Petr Pavel made a detour to Cambridge to give a lecture at Harvard University. Asked by the debate moderator whether there was a risk Czechia would follow the populist, anti-European direction of neighbours Slovakia and Hungary after the elections, Pavel admitted that “it would be irresponsible if I said there was no danger”. The head of state – who must remain non-partisan in the electoral fight but also acts as a guarantor to the country’s international obligations – noted that frontrunner ANO “is not against the EU or NATO [and] understands that the only way we can guarantee our security and prosperity is within these organisations”, instead pointing the finger, without naming them, to movements like SPD and Stacilo that are pushing for a referendum on Czechia’s EU and NATO memberships. “I hope our people understand what is at stake,” Pavel continued. “We cannot afford any experiment and risk our security with a referendum that could end up the same way at the Brexit referendum… I think that, in the end, we will probably not witness any significant changes in the foreign policy direction” of the Czech Republic. The president has already indicated he could decide not to nominate any minister who questions Czechia’s place in the EU and NATO, while ANO assured that it opposed holding any referendum on the country’s place in those institutions.
