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“Wanted Dead or Alive”: Slovak PM Dodges Court Summons

Tibor Blazko — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:26:32 +0000

Robert Fico served his first term as Slovakia's Prime Minister from 2006 to 2010, then spent two years in the opposition, and was re-appointed as the PM in April 2012. In 2011, during his gap years from premiership, Fico – being fully aware “of all the legal consequences” – said [sk] that his successor (and, later, his predecessor), PM Iveta Radičová, was “incompetent, a liar, and suspected to have been involved in corruption.”

Radičová sued Fico, demanding an apology for his statement, but he has been ignoring the trial [sk] for a whole year now, and even the police cannot find the PM's address to serve him court summons.

According to the population register, Fico does not exist officially (probably for security reasons). Judge Michaela Králová approached the district police headquarters to have the mail delivered to Fico's last known address. The police discovered that although the nameplate on the door still said “Fico,” the PM's apartment had been sold and the new owner (who happens to be Fico's nephew) claimed he did not know the PM's current residential address. (A few months ago, however, Fico announced publicly [sk] that he had moved to a luxury residence, Bonaparte, located near Bratislava Castle.) The police then sent a notice by mail to the Cabinet Office, but they refused to accept it there.

Radičová, who had returned to Slovakia from Oxford because of the trial, called the situation “a comedy.”

Fico's spokesman said the claims that “it was not possible to deliver something to one of the most public people in Slovakia” were “ridiculous.”

A recent sighting of the PM occurred at a melodramatic prime time TV show. Gabor Grendel, a former journalist and ex-spokesman of the Ministry of the Interior, wrote [sk]:

When it comes to a TV show that features poignant human stories, there is absolutely no problem delivering an invitation to Robert Fico. But once it is the court that's looking for him to explain his remarks, for which he is sued by Iveta Radičová, suddenly there is no one in the Cabinet Office who could take his summons.

Peter Jankovič, of the civic association “Stop Alibismus” [sk], addressed Fico [sk] mockingly:

[...] due to the recent events, I would kindly ask you to dismiss the Minister of the Interior Robert Kaliňák from his post as soon as possible. [...] The employees of his resort are unable to deliver even ordinary mail from the court and not even to the state's most famous citizen, who, moreover, is not hiding. [...]

Ján Macek wrote [sk]:

If the cops are mentally okay, I wonder if it is normal that Slovakia has a person whose address they cannot find as the PM.

Tomáš Bosák wrote [sk]:

I would like to remind the judge of the District Court in Pezinok that Fico is in the Cabinet Office and has enough time to participate in a TV show. Similarly, he could have found the time to accept the [court summons] and to finally come to the hearing with ex-PM Radičová. But the Prime Minister has always tended to behave like a child whose toys have been taken away.

Below are some of the comments to this SME article [sk] on the situation.

User Najsocialnejsi.Financny.Zralok.z.J&T.Fico wrote [sk]:

Last week [Fico] was screaming that there was no rule of law in Slovakia. Right now I do not know whether he was complaining or praising his own work.

User Hlava81 wrote [sk]:

It is contempt for the judiciary. What kind of country is this, where the Prime Minister ignores laws. [...] How do they expect citizens to abide by the laws?

User Dana Bobeková wrote [sk]:

What is the difference between the PM and a member of the Mafia? None. Neither one agrees to accept mail. :)

User a boľševizmus musí byť zničený!!! alluded [sk] to Fico's passion for luxury items – and to the recording of Fico's 2002 secret speech that was made public before the 2010 election, in which “a voice similar to Fico's” said he had made millions “with his own head” (GV wrote about it here):

That's why I recommend: Announce that in the building of the court free Rolex watches will be distributed. [...] He will come – with his own head.

User Kasi wrote [sk]:

[...] Maybe it is necessary to give [the court summons] to him at the live press conference.

User logikanepusti wrote [sk]:

[...] How about having Interpol search for him?

User appleVSsamsung commented [sk] on Fico's academic credentials:

Do you think that a juris doctor and even a PhD has those degrees just for fun? It took him a piece of hard work to learn how to cheat the system :D

User mirsa wrote [sk]:

And who would now claim that we are all equal before the law? The Prime Minister as a lawyer does not believe it, either, and behaves accordingly.

User vskiper wrote [sk]:

[It's] great to live in a country where the police cannot find the PM ;))

User Chytrak wrote [sk]:

“Wanted Dead or Alive” notes should be posted [...].

Mercedes for President of Dilapidated Slovak University

Tibor Blazko — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:43:47 +0000

Blogger Tomáš Homola blogs [sk] about a new Mercedes Benz E car recently acquired for 63,096 Euros for Professor Karol Mičieta [sk], the Rector/President of Comenius University in Bratislava. Homola describes Mičieta's connection to politics, and also recalls that the Ministry of Education just a short time ago was forced to cancel renting of an Audi A6 [sk] for about 3,000 Euros per month from a company whose owner is the former Minister of Economy allegedly deeply involved in the Gorilla scandal. The saddest part of the story is the extremely poor condition that the university building is currently in (see images in Homola's post).

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Green Patrol Cleans Up Slovakia

Tibor Blazko — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 20:19:50 +0000

The area near the main train station in Bratislava doesn't look too neat [sk]. Nor do other neighborhoods. Some people refuse to accept it passively, however. Next month, the Green Patrol (Zelená hliadka; sk) initiative, led by Matúš Čupka, will celebrate its second anniversary. Through targeted cleaning actions, Green Patrol aims at highlighting the problem of garbage in public areas and motivating citizens to pay more attention to the environment in which they live (see photos). Bratislava's Green Patrol community has already inspired people in other parts of Slovakia (e.g., here and here; sk).

Slovakia's Roads: “Adopt a Pothole and Watch It Grow”

Tibor Blazko — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 10:33:20 +0000

This year, the situation on Slovakia's roads is bad. On the average, it is probably worse than a year ago.

On Feb. 28, SME newspaper wrote [sk] that in Košice county in Eastern Slovakia alone, there are over 37,000 square meters of potholes, even though the winter is still not over. Zoltán Bartos, the director of the local Road Administration, said that when they were not able to fix potholes [quickly], they had to mark them using warning road signs. Recently, drivers have been destroying these signs to avoid police fines for speeding, or to be able to get compensation for damaged cars from their insurance companies. That's why workers have already started taking pictures of the newly-installed warning signs.

Below are some of the comments from SME.sk's readers.

roman.com:

I wonder how much this pothole documenting costs.

ienko:

and what if road workers buy one sign and then take a photo with it at 25 different places?

Jirkohu:

Repair the potholes well and permanently and this new phenomenon will disappear.

Ján Divno:

In Switzerland, where they have similar if not worse weather – heat, winter, water, snow – and you won't find a single patch on the road! I don't know how they do it, but there are no potholes!

leomir:

I'm driving along the potholes, and suddenly – a road!

In another discussion [sk], users have calculated that in Slovakia €85,000 in car- and road-related fees and taxes are collected annually per each road kilometer.

Here is a dashboard camera video of a first-class road near Domaša in Eastern Slovakia:

Many other examples can be easily found by searching “výtlky 2013″ (“potholes 2013″) at images.google.sk.

Here is a joke popular with the Slovak netizens these days:

An Englishman asks a Slovak: “Which side of the road do you drive on here? Left or right?
The Slovak responds: “‘Round the holes, buddy!”

The image below comes from Diery.sk [sk], a crowdsourced map of potholes that initially covered only Slovakia's capital, Bratislava, but from the end of this week will display information provided by users in other parts of the country:

How to recognize a drunk driver – in Austria and Slovakia? (Image by Diery.sk, used with permission.)

A pothole documentation project [sk] launched by Nový čas [New Time] newspaper, has recycled this viral phrase for its title:

Adopt a pothole and watch it grow…

A recently established RSS Daily, a mock news outlet inspired by one of Slovak President's gaffes (more about it in this GV text), quotes [sk] a non-existing deputy of the Union of Slovak Car Services who thinks that pothole repairs carried out in some cities are irresponsible and discourage drivers from making timely overhauls of their cars:

Often just a torn-off wheel reveals a much more serious fault with the car.

But just as life is often stranger than fiction, so is real-life news compared to fake news. Last year, musician Milan Capák lost patience with the holes on the sidewalks of his city Rožňava in Eastern Slovakia and started repairing them on his own and at his own cost, later continuing with the potholes on the roads. German ARD TV did a story [video; de] about Capák's selfless initiative. Later, however, a city official sent him a letter [sk], requesting him to stop his work – because he was using the wrong technologies and was making repairs on the land that was not his property.

Stadiums Vs. Schools: Slovakia's Misplaced Priorities

Tibor Blazko — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 09:39:05 +0000

When at the end of 2012 thousands of Slovak teachers went on nationwide strike, demanding a 10-percent pay rise, they ended up getting only about 5 percent – along with the Education Minister's explanation that “if there was money in the state treasury box, teachers would get as much as 20 percent.”

Just a few months later, the same minister – Dušan Čaplovič – announced plans [sk] to spend 45 million euros (4.5 million euros annually over a ten-year period) on the construction of football stadiums all over the country, to be used by the top Slovak football league. This sum, which does not cover the construction of the new National Football Stadium in the capital Bratislava, is smaller than what the teachers’ raise would have amounted to in just one year. Still, the teachers are disappointed, and not just because of their own low salaries, but also because of the state's insufficient funding of education in general.

Some in Slovakia suspect that the reason behind such misplaced priorities is the alleged involvement of the ruling party's sponsors in football business and construction industry. The Education Minister, however, talks of the planned stadium construction as a strategic decision in supporting the young generation.

The SME.sk article [sk] linked to above has generated hundreds of reader comments, and below are a few of them.

Kiixxela:

Stinkers, do not let them even try to pull the arguments about sports and the health of young people, because the foot of an [ordinary] mortal will not [be allowed to] enter those courts/playgrounds in a [whole] lifetime.

Aqua Viva:

Who are we going to build those football stadiums for? For those hooligans who will come there just to fight and ruin the stadium? How much does the deployment of police cost, to constantly monitor such matches?

belnea:

But how will we get to the stadiums? The roads are broken. [This year Slovak roads are in an extremely bad condition.]

mala pistacia:

What will [Slovakia's] unemployed do all the day? In the morning, they'll go to the labor office, in the evening – to a football game.

Timmy_A:

In addition, it is complete nonsense to build [a new] stadium here when only a couple hundred people usually come to the old Locomotive Stadium.

ja111:

But the poor mafia comrades have bought [...] football clubs and now they've run out of money [...] so the state must pay for it!

Cule de FCB:

Schools are collapsing over the heads of students and teachers. No reconstruction is necessary? It's better to donate money to a PRIVATE football club?

provokater128:

We're going to donate money for stadiums – where 20 times a year about 500 people come for football. And that is a falling school – where 200 days a year 500 children come and the wind blows at them in the classroom through a rotten window – but it does not matter.

Deju:

In Slovakia, schools have windows that are 50-60 years old, and because of it, it is cold in those schools and also lots of money is being wasted on heating. I think it is necessary to define the priorities. [...]

panza09:

hm, what would the 45 most devastated schools say to 84,000 euros per year…hmmmmmm

Chocholko [in reply]:

They would say, “It is a beautiful dream.”

iwko:

My girlfriend is a teacher, she got 5 percent more, but they took away all additions [to her base salary], so now she has 10 percent less, a university degree, works for the second year teaching English and brings home 400 euros [a month], and yes, she goes to work at 7am and finished at about 2pm, and in the afternoon she's also teaching at [a private] language school [to earn extra money].

fff01:

A photo with nice-looking athletes brings more votes to a politican than a photo with a satisfied teacher.

European Regional Differences

Tibor Blazko — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 22:49:52 +0000

Slovak NGO/think-tank Conservative Institute [en] blogged [sk] about the results of a study of 270 second-level EU regions (NUTS 2). Comparing changes in unemployment, they found that during 1990-2011, despite the growing amount of Euro-funds, the differences between the regions grew by about 4 percentage points. In more than 50 years of European integration, the EU institutions have created 112,140 regulations. Conservative Institute claims [sk] that the actual EU strategy is causing loss of competitiveness, higher debts, taxes and a lower level of employment:

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Slovak PM's Support for 2022 Winter Olympics Bid Draws Criticism

Tibor Blazko — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 02:01:50 +0000

Whereas Norway and Switzerland are planning to hold referenda before submitting their 2022 Winter Olympics bids, the fate of the Slovak-Polish joint bid already seems decided: the Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has declared his support for it, without waiting for the government's approval.

Slovakia's Olympic expenditures were initially estimated at €200 million, but later the Minister of Finance spoke [sk] of €300 million, while some estimates amount to nearly €500 million. Slovak NGOs, such as Aliancia Fair-Play, and the opposition parties are demanding [sk] the precise cost analysis and a list of funding sources.

Economist Richard Ďurana thinks [sk] that the “organization of the Olympic Games is a very expensive, short-term boost of national pride that only very rich or very irresponsible countries can afford.”

Imrich Body, a member of the non-parliamentary 99 Percent-Civic Voice party, sees the Olympics [sk] as another attempt to “feed the Gorilla“, referring to the corruption scandal that shook Slovakia a year ago.

Blogger Matej Bórik has these questions [sk] for the Prime Minister:

How do you ensure that there will be no overcharge scenario as in London, Athens, Sochi, Vancouver and other mega-cities? What steps will you take when it will occur? Do you have enough cash in [your] personal account?

Blogger Samo Marec writes [sk]:

It should be noted that we have already been fighting for the Olympics – and even twice. [...] It is possible that I'm alone with this opinion, but I strongly believe that the sole purpose of the [Olympic bidding] is making public money private once again. Compared to [those who came up with] this plan, [Jaromír Ruda, known for the failed Deaflympics,] is a poor amateur. [...]

Blogger Karol Šebo is optimistic [sk]:

Poland, not Slovakia, will play the leading role in convincing the International Olympic Committee.

Poland, which has only recently organized EURO 2012 successfully; Poland, which has a strong lobby in a number of organizations around the world. And not to mention that Krakow has a strong brand image internationally. That's why I think that this joint candidacy has a real chance to be successful, and any success provides Slovakia with a great chance to become more visible, something that does not happen often.

Blogger Tomáš Bosák writes [sk]:

A candidate to host the Olympics now, when we are languishing [under austerity measures]? What do we need the Olympics for? [...] I am just wondering from where this or that government will have the money for this parade.

Because I remember what a show it was about [the hockey stadium in Bratislava] and how it kept growing more expensive. Now it would not be enough to build just one stadium. I don't know, it reminds me of organizing May Day celebrations. No calculations, no documentation, but let's do it, because people will have fun. And we will have a chance to show off.

Mikuláš Huba, an ecologist and a newly-elected MP, writes [sk]:

There is a threat to the nature, because the Tatras are not the Alps.

Not giving money to doctors and teachers, but giving it to officials, politicians, developers and sponsors?

The candidacy for the Olympics is such a serious decision that it cannot and should not be made by one person and in one day; it requires a serious, long-term and informed debate not just in the parliament, but in the society as a whole, following the example of Norway.

Prime Minister has openly demonstrated how serious he is about the consolidation of the public finances and also what (and who) his priorities are.

Slovak President Butt of Jokes Online Due to Prosecutor General Saga

Tibor Blazko — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 11:39:04 +0000

The post of the Prosecutor General has been vacant for more than a year in Slovakia.

Despite this, the Prosecutor General's Office has a very strong position. For example, it has recently managed to attack [sk], in the Constitutional Court, the law on minimal wages of nurses, arguing that it was a selective law that addressed the needs of just one group of medical workers, and, moreover, there were no funds in the budget to implement it. The Court ended up “postponing” the adoption of the law.

At the time of the Slovak Courts's decision, the neighboring Czech Republic promoted a popular prosecutor Lenka Bradáčová, who is “widely praised for her anti-corruption fight.” The Czech example appeared to be the opposite of the Slovak experience and showed why Slovak politicians on all sides of the political spectrum wanted to have their “own” friendly Prosecutor General.

And if that was impossible, then it was better to have none at all.

The previous Parliament chose Jozef Čentéš in June 2011, but President Ivan Gašparovič did not appoint him. At first, he was waiting for the Constitutional Court to determine if he had the right to reject the proposed candidacy or whether he had to approve it. In October 2012, the Court found [sk] that the President could reject a candidate who either did not meet the statutory prerequisites for appointment or there were grounds to call into question his/her ability to perform this function. The President had to make a decision in a reasonable time, however.

When a month later a journalist asked Gašparovič why he still had not appointed a prosecutor, she got this response [sk] from the President:

Are you illiterate? Don't you know how to read decisions of the Constitutional Court? There you have it, white on black.

It was neither the first time that the President was rude to a woman [en], nor the first time when he said something wrong.

Slovak diplomats already know how it is when the “President of the head of the state” (Gašparovič's own construction) speaks about Serbia being located by the sea, uses the word ‘balcony’ instead of the Balkans, Lebanon instead of Lisbon, or John Major instead of Tony Blair.

Commenting on the influence of the mafia in sports, the President once said [sk]:

Well, and what [to do] now? When these people are not there anymore, there will also be no football.

Now Gašparovič's past quotes and new jokes have gone viral on the web again.

A mock graph [sk] on the contents of the Slovak internet, posted recently by Cynická obluda, reflect this trend – porn (green) and instructions on how to make a bomb (yellow) lag far behind the jokes about Gašparovič (blue):

“The contents of the internet (as of Jan. 6, 2013)” – by Cynická obluda, used with permission.

Gašparovič's “white-on-black” response to a journalist featured in another one [sk] of Cynická obluda's parodies:

“The Constitutional Court spends more on printer toner than on wages and heating combined. It is no fun when we have to publish all resolutions white on black.” By Cynická obluda, used with permission.

When this year the President finally made the long-awaited Prosecutor General decision, it was not in Čentéš's favor. His arguments will be re-examined by the Constitutional Court.

One of these arguments against the appointment of Čentéš was a quote from a nonexistent publication that the President called “RSS Daily” (“denník RSS”) – which, in fact, turned out to be .týždeň (“The Week”), an online news and commentary outlet:

Needless to say, this blunder did not go unnoticed [sk] by Cynická obluda:

“Don't teach the President! RSS Daily does, of course, exist – I buy it every morning at the “Opening hours” newsstand.” By Cynická obluda, used with permission.

On a more serious note, the President's delayed Prosecutor General decision made many people angry.

A few citizens protested in front of the presidential palace, some signed a Facebook petition [sk] calling for a referendum about the President's removal. Fortunately, the petition did not succeed, because if there was a referendum, it would most likely fail because of non-participating voters. And, in accordance with the Slovak Constitution, this would restart the slowly ending five years of President Gašparovič's term. And this is why the anti-Gašparovič activists have quickly switched to an attempt to sue the President [sk].

Another recent presidential scandal involved blogger Juraj Poláček, who wrote [sk], among other things, that in August 2009, just one day after the President left an army training area, one of his regular hunting companions was accidentally shot there. The blogger wondered if the President's January 2012 amnesty was perhaps designed for the man who did the shooting. Even though Poláček later added that his theory about the amnesty was incorrect, the President decided to sue him for libel.

The President's spokesman said [sk] his boss had been on holiday in Croatia at the time of the shooting. Journalists, however, found that it was not true, so later the President's office came up with other “sightings” of him on that day (e.g., at a football game that never took place). For a while, Gašparovič's whereabouts were simply declared a state secret.

Naturally, this strange behavior has generated some rumors online. As well as plenty of hunting jokes.

Here is one:

“We hunters promise that we will always stand behind the President. It is the only safe place!” By Cynická obluda, used with permission.

Pjotr posted this comment [sk] on SME.sk, bringing home the sobering truth that the overall situation in Slovakia is actually the saddest of the jokes circulating out there:

ANNOUNCEMENT

The Office of the President of the head of the statehood of the Slovak Republic is seeking a quantum physicist to calculate the position of His Excellency, since the president has found in himself the quantum properties and not only can he be simultaneously in two different places, but he can also appear as an element of the ruling party and as one riding on the wave of a civil candidate, but, judging by his functional performance, it is not clear if he is alive or dead.

Slovakia: Social Benefits for Roma

Tibor Blazko — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 22:48:32 +0000

Lucia Kureková, in her blog analysis [sk], shows that in Slovakia the majority of those who receive the Benefit in Material Need (BMN) are not the “typical” Roma families with many children, but are single, of any ethnicity, and childless (62%), often young and unemployed. About two-thirds of the Slovak Roma households receive child support and other family benefits; about half of them receive BMN, but here they make up about one-third of all benefit-receiving families (while officially there are just about 2% of the Roma population in Slovakia).

Slovak Antimonopoly Office Defends Obligatory Microsoft Use

Tibor Blazko — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 23:16:19 +0000

European Information Society Institute, a Slovak NGO, reports [sk] that the Slovak Antimonopoly Office (AMO) does not see it as a problem that the country's Financial Directorate is forcing taxpayers to use Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer, arguing that there is just about 10 percent of 44,000 subjects who have to use eTax and eDane applications, which are not compatible with Microsoft Windows. Netizen jaaaaaaaaaaj notes [sk] that, using AMO's logic, murder also affects just a negligible number of the population.

Slovak Netizen Initiative to Redesign State Institutions’ Sites

Tibor Blazko — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 23:39:08 +0000

Inspired by sf.citi (San Francisco Citizens Initiative for Technology & Innovation), Jakub Ptačin [sk] and Peter Fabor [sk] have launched It's Not Possible (“To Sa Nedá”; sk; on Facebook – here), an initiative whose goal is to redesign websites of selected state institutions – for free and without political ambitions. In the initial phase, they created a public text file for citizens to report problems of the Slovak land register portal. They have also already met with a member of the Slovak Blind and Partially Sighted [Persons'] Union.

Slovak Blogger Promotes Fairness in State Support for Businesses

Tibor Blazko — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 01:07:48 +0000

Blogger Robert Huran reports [sk] on the initial success of his online form [sk] for entrepreneurs, which was created two months ago in response to the news [sk] of the €200 million governmental support for ten selected companies. The reasons these companies were chosen included promises of investment and creation of 2,400 new jobs, as well as preservation of about 1,500 jobs. Now, thanks to Huran, over 200 companies are going to ask for €33 million in state support for providing over 3,200 new and existing jobs. Huran's goal is to push for clear rules that will be the same for everyone – or to discourage stimulus at all, to prevent deformation of entrepreneurial environment.

Slovak Government Keeps Paying Millions for Microsoft Products

Tibor Blazko — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 23:26:52 +0000

Every year, the Slovak state pays about 200 Euros per computer for a license allowing the use of the newest Microsoft products and services.
Activist Štefan Szilva has collected information [pdf, sk] about 30 percent of the 82,000 ‘state-owned computers'. From it, the IT website dsl.sk has computed this statistics [sk]: 76.4 percent of PCs have Windows XP (released in 2001) and 50.2 percent of PCs have MS Office 2003.

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Doubting the Efficiency of EU Funding for Slovakia

Tibor Blazko — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 12:36:32 +0000

The European Commission has unveiled plans [sk] for priorities in funding Slovakia during the years of 2014-2020. The general principle will remain the same, with the money of European taxpayers being used for projects compatible with the aims of the central bureaucracy.

One of the problems with the EU funding is that the money is often used for unnecessary and unproductive initiatives and projects.

For example, if a village needs to repair a sidewalk and would like to use Euro-funds for it, it is necessary to find a supporting story. Let's say, the development of regional tourism. It means that, in addition to sidewalk repairs, it will also be necessary to spend the EU money on a few signs with a map of the village's few streets – which in fact no one really needs. If the villagers are smart enough, they can, for example, also use the Euro-funds to renovate an old library: all they have to do is rename it to the Tourist Information Center and store some leaflets there, in case some tourists actually do show up.

To get the money, it is necessary to understand and fill out the appropriate documents. Or, it is possible to pay a specialized company, which will deal with the paperwork itself.

In 2004-2010, Slovakia spent [sk] 90 euro-cents per each received euro on its Euro-funds projects (receiving 6.5 billion euro, paying 3.9 billion to the EU, and spending 2 billion on co-financed projects). In 2011, Slovakia paid 576.3 million euro to the EU – and received 1.79 billion euro in EU funding.

From the 27,000 planned projects, about 16,500 were rejected; the related losses have been approximately 600 million euros [sk].

Another problem is deformation of entrepreneurial environment. When one company receives funds to build, say, a farm hotel, its neighbors with the same business plan usually receive nothing.

Martin Barto, former vice-governor of the Slovak National Bank, said this [sk] about the EU funding:

I see Euro-funds as a strategy for the hard core of the European Union to buy politicians in the new member states in order to continue integration in accordance with these groups’ concepts.

Below is a selection of Slovak netizens’ comments [sk] on the issue.

LSD1979:

so many subsidies and redistribution according to dubious rules, this will not turn out well. somewhere we will take, somewhere pour more, we will tax everyone more and then we will grant exceptions to big companies, this system is called “somehow was, somehow will be” and that way it will end.

vw resurrection:

They will take [tax money] from functional firms and employees, assign the money to friends [in accordance with corrupt rules] [...]. The best way out for the European Commission would be to immediately abolish the EU funding and make every country reduce taxes by the amount they contributed to the EU funding.

Marky_Barky:

give, give, give, and we here will pretty steal everything…

deon_:

And who will give money to Brussels? Really, is there anyone who still believes that money is falling from the sky? We will pay everything, not once, but with interest.

zappa:

Capable governments of the EU countries should work without EU funds and any subsidies [...] At least there would be no excuse for anyone and the blackmailing potential of these funds would be zero.

And here are a few more views [sk]:

boris_a:

EU funds are just an instrument of transferring the money to private companies without getting the people to complain that private companies are supported from the state budget.

It is not useless to realize that the EU funds come from the taxes collected by the states, which are initially sent to Brussels and then they come as Euro-funds, from which it is already legal to support private companies. While Brussels prohibits direct support of private firms from the state budget, it already supports them with the EU funds.

Shaolin:

[...] from 90 cents posted to Brussels we will get back 1 euro, the gain will be lost in corruption, inefficient investment and so on. If this money were put on deposit, then we'd have better returns, and the best returns would be if the money stayed in the economy and it alone would say where the bucks are needed.

Slovak “Decent Life” Protesters Burn EU Flag

Tibor Blazko — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 09:43:25 +0000

About 100 people took part in a follow-up “Together for a Decent and Safe Life” protest [sk, images, videos], co-organized by Oskar Dobrovodský, in Bratislava on Nov. 10 (more about Dobrovodský's case and the previous, Oct. 13, rally is here). After the protesters burned the EU flag, police detained two of them.

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