Eurasia Press & News
Elsewhere, more bribe-taking revelations emerge from Prague spy affair; Hungary pushes for next NATO chief to come from CEE; and Poland prepares for local elections on Sunday.
On Saturday, Slovakia will elect its new head of state. Either former diplomat Ivan Korcok or Speaker of Parliament Peter Pellegrini, leader of the coalition Hlas party, will replace Zuzana Caputova in June. The latest polls favour Korcok, a non-partisan candidate who’s been the subject of a massive smear campaign since he won the first round on March 23. On the other hand, Pellegrini, the coalition’s candidate who came in second in the first round, has struggled to explain the funding of his campaign and the use of luxury items like a private jet owned by his friend. Polling agencies say the election is too close to call: a poll by Focus puts Pellegrini as the winner with 50.8 per cent; other polls, including those carried out by Ipsos and NMS, have Korcok as the winner. Experts say that the election will be decided by ethnic Hungarian and anti-system voters. The turnout is expected to exceed 50 per cent again.
The former Czech PM and opposition leader Andrej Babis threw his support behind Pellegrini this week. Describing Slovakia’s current parliamentary speaker as “the best candidate”, Babis, who is himself originally from Slovakia, fondly recalled when both men were premiers between 2018 and 2020. At that time, he claimed, the Visegrad Group worked in perfect harmony for the service of “our people”, as opposed to today when the government of PM Fiala has broken V4 unity – a reference to Prague’s recent decision to suspend intergovernmental consultations with Bratislava over key disagreements on Russia and Ukraine.
The far-right SNS, one of the three coalition parties, wants to force NGOs to publish details about donors and donations. Moreover, organisations that are funded from abroad should be labelled “organisations with foreign support”, though it wouldn’t concern those NGOs that solely receive financing from EU support schemes. The party also wants to extend the list of reasons under which the Interior Ministry could shut down a non-profit. Parliament is due to debate the SNS bill later this month. NGOs have said that the bill is very similar to a repealed Hungarian anti-NGO bill, which was found to have violated EU law. PM Robert Fico said after the parliamentary election last year that he wants to label NGOs funded from abroad as “foreign agents”. After he was ousted from office in 2018, following the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak, Fico blamed NGOs for orchestrating a state coup. His majority government has already scrapped funding for projects supporting human rights and the fight against disinformation.
Bribery allegations from Prague spy affair; Germany donates large to Czech shell scheme
Further revelations that emerged this week from Czechia’s BIS intelligence agency about the extent of Russian propagandism and influence-peddling caused uproar across Europe. Last week, based on a BIS report conducted in cooperation with Ukrainian intelligence services, the Czech government cracked down on a vast Kremlin-orchestrated network pushing anti-Ukrainian, anti-EU and pro-Russian narratives across the bloc’s media sphere and political arena. A central piece of the network, the Prague-based and Poland-registered Voice of Europe outlet, and its two architects were put on Czechia’s national sanctions list. Since then, further investigations in Czech daily Denik N and Germany’s Der Spiegel revealed that the Moscow-funded operation funnelled money to politicians from a host of countries (including Poland, Hungary, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium) as a way to get as many pro-Russian politicians elected to the European Parliament in the June EU elections. For now, it appears no Czech politician was the recipeint of such payments, though Prague seemed to be where money changed hands and, according to Denik N, one of the suspected politicians is Czech-born far-right AfD politician Petr Bystron – an allegation he denies. Several countries, including Poland, Germany and the Netherlands, are already calling for investigations into the disturbing intelligence coming out of Czechia.
Notably, a couple of high-ranking Slovak politicians gave interviews to Voice of Europe before Prague blocked it last week. Among them were Culture Minister Martina Simkovicova, a disinformation channel star with pro-Russian views, but also MP Erik Kalinak, PM Fico’s chief advisor and a nephew of Defence Minister Robert Kalinak. Kalinak and Simkovicova, who both denied receiving money for the interviews, are critical of the EU and are running in June’s EU elections. In response to suspicions he was paid by Russia, Kalinak claimed earlier this week that he had asked the Slovak intelligence service’s deputy chief Pavol Gaspar to check the bank accounts of journalists in Slovakia. The Slovak Information Service declined to say if it complied with Kalinak’s request. Several ministers opined that Kalinak’s statement was an inappropriate joke. On Facebook, Kalinak later wrote: “To the absurd accusations of the frustrated opposition and the desperate media that I’m a Russian agent, I refuse to react in any other way than ironically.”
In the largest publicly announced contribution so far to the Czech-led initiative to provide artillery shells for Ukraine from third countries, German Defence Ministry spokesman Dennis Kohler said this week that Berlin had pledged 576 million euros. The generous input, which should cover about 180,000 shells out of the total 800,000 initially planned, would come in addition to a separate Ukraine aid package worth some 500 million euros, according to German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius. About 20 countries have so far announced their support for the Czech drive to bolster Ukraine’s military capabilities, but few have revealed the exact amount of their participation. Also committing to providing logistical support, Poland recently said it would double its financial contribution, without revealing the exact figure, while the Netherlands promised to increase its part from the initial 100 million euros to 250 million euros. Czech officials earlier revealed funding had been secured for the first batch of 300,000 artillery shells, whose delivery is now expected in June, with a further 200,000 rounds negotiated under non-binding agreements. Although some media have circulated Turkey, South Korea and South Africa as possible sellers, EU and NATO officials remain tight-lipped to shield any suppliers from retaliatory measures from Russia and its allies.
Hungary pushes for Central European NATO chief; ‘luxury learning’ at Fidesz-close college
Hungarian PM Viktor Orban held a series of EU and NATO-related talks in Bucharest this week, with one item high on the agenda being the election of the next NATO secretary general. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis is a candidate along with Dutch caretaker PM Mark Rutte. Orban has previously made it clear he would not support Rutte, with whom he’s had a series of run-ins, but is not openly advocating for Iohannis either. Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, was more outspoken than his boss, clearly indicating support for a candidate from CEE. “In the history of NATO, there has never been a secretary general appointed from a Central or Eastern European country, although we have been members of the alliance for 25 years,” Szijjarto said. “If we agree the main challenge now comes from the east, then I think it is a good idea to have a secretary general from the eastern half of NATO at some point.” He admitted a significant number of members clearly support the election of Rutte, but Hungary is not among them, “as a defence alliance needs trust at the highest political level, and we cannot trust a person who has previously talked about bringing Hungary to its knees.” The latest speculation is that the current chief, Jens Stoltenberg, will be asked to extend his mandate yet again from October 1 to after the US presidential election.
Further clashes between Hungary and its NATO allies were in evidence when foreign ministers from the 32 member states met in Brussels on Thursday to mark the alliance’s 75th anniversary. Ahead of the meeting, Hungary pulled out of an initiative to coordinate and increase military support to Ukraine. The alliance is also preparing for the possibility of Donald Trump’s return to the White House and, in this context, European member states could have to take on more responsibility for supporting Ukraine. Hungary, however, has made it clear that it opposes the idea, warning that if NATO takes on a coordinating role in sending weapons to Ukraine, the alliance will move ever closer to war, an accusation rejected by Stoltenberg.
The Fidesz-affiliated education centre Mathias Corvinus College offers luxury accommodation, gourmet food for students, and sky-high fees for its foreign and domestic speakers, the investigative news site Direkt36.hu revealed this week. Insiders told the news site that a few years ago students at summer and winter camps were put up in multi-bed dormitories, but in 2023 students on a ski holiday stayed at a four-star hotel in Slovakia’s Stary Smokovec, a popular winter resort, with wellness, bowling, ski lessons and winter excursions on offer. Catering costs at MCC events – such as snails and champagne at a French election monitoring event – are several times higher than normal market prices. The fees paid for foreign speakers has also raised eyebrows: Norman Lewis, a British head of PwC and an expert of future trends, was paid 12 million forints (30,000 euros) for a three-month stint; German philosopher Alexander Gau got 6.8 million forints; and Jair Netanjahu, son of Israeli President Netanjahu, trousered 2.8 million forints for a two-hour panel discussion. Radek Sikorski, a rare opponent of the government, was also invited by the MCC and was paid 16 million forints. Visiting fellows are also well looked after, receiving a lump sum of 5,000 euros a month if they are under 35 and 10,000 euros above that, plus accommodation and insurance. This is 20 times the average salary of a Hungarian assistant professor. MCC, with a bureau in Brussels and a university acquired in Austria, has become the most generously funded educational institution in Hungary, although it does not even offer a degree. It has received former state-owned shares in blue-chip companies worth 290 billion forints (740 million euros) and attracts young students – some from humble backgrounds – with exclusive dinners, study trips abroad and a community where Orban’s illiberal worldview is widely promulgated. The institution has a clear ambition to become an intellectual hub for traditionalist, conservative and far-right thinkers from around the world, largely funded by taxpayer money, in a country where education and health spending is well below the global average and monthly salaries lag behind most other EU member states.
Poland prepares for local elections; aid worker killed in Gaza; no morning-after pill
Polish voters head to the polls on Sunday for the first round of local elections, in what is expected to prove a good day for the democratic coalition currently in power, further cementing its domination over the previous ruling PiS party. Voters will take part in several polls, voting for regional councils as well as mayors and local councils. Reflecting a rise in its support levels that put it for the first time in years above PiS, Tusk’s Civic Platform will face voters alone in these elections, not as part of the tri-party coalition that ousted PiS in the last general election and is now running the country, although further cooperation after the vote can be expected. Among the other members of the governing coalition, the New Left are going it alone while the agrarian party PSL has stuck to its alliance (dubbed The Third Way) with Szymon Holownia’s party. Rafal Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, is expected to win a second term, with the vote being closely watched to see how the politician performs amid speculation he could try again for the presidency next year.
The Foreign Ministry this week demanded explanations from the Israeli government and prosecutors opened a homicide investigation after Polish aid worker Damian Sobol was killed on Monday in Gaza, when the humanitarian convoy he was a part of was hit by an Israeli airstrike. The 35-year-old from the city of Przemysl was one of seven humanitarian aid workers with World Central Kitchen that were killed. He was known for his previous humanitarian work in Ukraine. In a social media post, Tusk said the killing of the aid worker was “severely testing Poland’s solidarity with Israel”.
President Andrzej Duda vetoed a bill to restore access without prescription to emergency contraception – i.e., the so-called “morning-after pill”. Poland is currently just one of two EU countries where women need a prescription to obtain the drug, while doctors can refuse to issue such a prescription on conscientious grounds. In February, the coalition majority in parliament passed legislation that gives patients aged 15 and over access to the medicine without prescription, but Duda had indicated from the start he would oppose it on the grounds that the pill, he claimed, was a “hormonal bomb” which should not become accessible to “children”. Duda said the bill is “dangerous for children”, in that “a girl could buy the pill and, just in case, take five at one time”. In reality, the second-day contraception comes in packages of one dose or two doses per pack, and can cost as much as 100 zloty (25 euros). The Health Ministry is currently preparing a new regulation that would allow pharmacists to offer it over the counter, potentially with parental approval required for patients aged between 15 and 18.
