Tag: government crisis

Slovak president appoints ‘non-party’ government to solve crisis

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As a result of the country’s prolonged political crisis, Slovakia’s President Zuzana Čaputová has appointed a government of experts, not politicians, to run the country.

After having to stand by and watch one minister after another argue and have their conflicting personalities stall political action in Slovakia for months, President Zuzana Čaputová has decided to take the task of stabilising the country into her own hands.

On Friday, Čaputová announced her appointees for an entirely new caretaker government, consisting solely of experts in their respective fields and without any ministers coming from the political parties.

Taking a cue from her own decision to abandon her career in civil society to become president, she urged the Slovak public to remain open-minded and to appreciate the massive sacrifice the new appointees in the caretaker mandate were making by abandoning their non-political positions to enter the government.

“I know very well how difficult such a decision is and how deeply it interferes with personal life. The people who go for it have my gratitude and respect. Let’s give them a chance, let’s not judge and condemn them in advance on the basis of purposeful lies that will certainly will be discovered,” the president said on Friday.

The caretaker government that was in power since December fell apart last week when caretaker Prime Minister Eduard Heger also offered his resignation.

In his place, Čaputová – Slovakia’s first female president, who boasts high support among Western allies – selected an expert government, headed by Ľudovít Ódor, who had until then served as vice-governor of the National Bank of Slovakia.

“The president said that if she feels the government is failing, she will step in and appoint an expert cabinet,” Grigorij Mesežnikov, President of the Institute for Public Affairs in Bratislava, told Euronews. 

“The president is now part of the executive government, and the government will be ruling with Zuzana Čaputová.”

For the first time ever, Slovakia will have a government cabinet made up entirely of experts – or technocrats – with no party affiliation. This “government of experts” is set to begin their mandate on 15 May.

Why has Slovakia been embroiled in a political crisis?

In early 2020, the country breathed a collective sigh of relief when the left-wing populist SMER-SD party of former PM Robert Fico was ousted from power in the parliamentary elections.

Fico was known for his combative relationship with the media in the country, several corruption scandals, and allegations of extensive abuse of power. 

His popularity saw a rapid decline after the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová. Kuciak was investigating tax fraud among associates of the Slovak government, and possible political connections with the Italian organised crime syndicate ‘Ndrangheta.

In March of 2020, a coalition of conservative, right-wing, liberal and centre-right parties led by Prime Minister Igor Matovič formed the new government. While it was an uneasy coalition, they were united by their respective campaigns promising to be an alternative to Fico.

However, the government collapsed almost exactly a year later in 2021, when news leaked that they had signed a secret deal to obtain the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. Elections were prevented by a reshuffle, which is when Matovič’s deputy in the OL’aNO party, Eduard Heger, became the new PM.

In the autumn of 2022, the Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party left the ruling coalition due to a dispute with Matovič – who had become finance minister in the meantime – over the handling of the energy crisis.

SaS demanded the drafting of a new coalition agreement and the departure of Igor Matovič from his post. When these conditions were not met, SaS joined the opposition.

Heger’s government lost its majority, and in December, a vote of no-confidence also tabled by Freedom and Solidarity delivered the final blow and paved the way for early elections.

“There are two reasons why the government fell apart last year,” said Mesežnikov. “The first was due to ideological differences of the parties, including liberals, conservatives and even reactionary and libertarian parties. They agree to implement the common program but one party rejected to do this, making it an incoherent coalition.”

“But the bigger issue were the personal relations between these leaders, in particular the inability of Matovič, the first prime minister, to cooperate with political partners. He was absolutely unrestricted in his political invention, he proposed things that provoked issues within the coalition and was hostile to other government partners.”

Richard Sulik, the leader of Freedom and Solidarity, and “his personal animosities were the obstacles to the continuation of the common government” which Mesežnikov said ended up being even more important than discrepancies in policy proposals.

Exodus of ministers

But the crisis does not end here. Heger became caretaker and was supposed to help the country smoothly transition to elections later in 2023, especially considering that Slovakia continues to play an important role in the supply of weapons to Ukraine.

Last week, Agriculture Minister Samuel Vlčan resigned after it became public that his personal company, Reko Recycling, received an EU grant from the Ministry of Environment. A day after him, the foreign minister resigned.

At this point, the government had already been missing a finance minister – Matovič was removed from his position in December by Čaputova so that a budget for 2023 could be passed. Also, the health minister had resigned in early March.

“According to the law, it is impossible to replace them with new ministers, so the PM was responsible for these missing positions,” said Mesežnikov.

Basically, Heger was juggling the caretaker PM position with two empty ministerial posts before he lost two more ministers last week.

“So the PM would have to take on responsibility for two other positions. It’s possible in the sense that the state secretaries would be acting in these positions, but it made the government basically dysfunctional,” continued Mesežnikov.

That is when Heger finally threw in the towel himself, and Čaputova stepped in to do a clean sweep of the entire government.

In chaos, a silver lining

The new Prime Minister Ľudovít Ódor seems to be most promising of the bunch. The calm, mild-mannered banker is widely considered to be one of Slovakia’s best-known economists.

“Odor is a good economist, he is the vice-governor of the National Nank and the author of popular publications on economics. So he’s a typical policymaker who had managerial and not political positions,” explains Mesežnikov.

Once he assumes his position next week, Ódor will be the first ethnic Hungarian prime minister in the country’s history. Slovak Hungarians are the largest minority in the country, numbering at around 9%.

However, Ódor is relatively unknown in mainstream circles. Recent polling showed that over 70% of the Slovak population did not know who he was.

“My expectation is that in the next couple of months, Ódor could become the most trustworthy and popular politician in the country,” Mesežnikov adds.

Once it assumes power next week, the new caretaker government has a one-month period during which it needs to have its program or “manifesto” approved by the parliament.

While the vote could go either way, during this period, Slovak law guarantees them special privileges that make them more powerful than an average caretaker government for that one month.

This means that they could vote or move on what is considered to be a backlog of around 250 pieces of legislature that were sidelined due to the political crisis.

“This expert government, if they’re smart, can use this time to make some really important changes,” Mesežnikov concludes.



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‘Welcome to a filthy, littered dump called Britain’

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“The situation is dire,” said John Read of Clean Up Britain. “We have a serious problem with litter in the UK. I’d go so far as to say it’s an epidemic.”

Drive along Britain’s roads recently and you’ll probably have noticed something: Litter. And lots of it.

Cigarette butts, beer bottles, cans, fast food wrappers, bin bags, plastic sheeting and white goods — to name just a few — are strewn in verges and laybys up and down the country.

“Britain is a naturally beautiful country, but right now it looks like a landfill,” said Read, who has campaigned on the issue for more than 12 years. “It’s shameful for international visitors to come here and see how filthy our country is.”

“The rubbish is a terrible statement about a country in decline,” he added.

In 2015, a Parliamentary Select Committee compared England with countries in Europe, Japan and North America, concluding it was arguably the most littered nation in the West. 

Not only an eye sore in Britain’s picturesque countryside, roadside litter also has a devastating environmental impact.

Toxins from the waste leach into the soil and waterways, while the RSPCA – an animal protection charity – says it receives 10 calls a day about animals affected by litter.

Responsibility for Britain’s unsightly roadsides lies with local authorities, who typically own verges and lay-bys of minor roads, while National Highways is obligated to collect litter from England’s motorways and major roads. 

Read claimed the extent of the problem meant they were “breaking the law every day”, while simultaneously allowing offenders to get away scot-free by not enforcing fines on offenders.

Under UK law, landowners and occupiers have a duty to keep land clear of litter and refuse for which they are responsible.

Yet, Read pointed out that “huge” budget cuts in recent years have been “instrumental” in causing the problem, though added this was only part of the story.

According to the Institute of Fiscal Studies, local councils in England have seen an average cut to their budgets of almost 26 per cent since 2010.

Meanwhile, the Insitute for Government found last year the ruling Conservative party had “hollowed out” local government services, including refuse collection.

‘Antisocial, selfish, ignorant behaviour’

However, Read was sceptical of what he called “easy excuses”, calling it a “typical British attitude” to blame someone else.

“A significant number of Britons are selfish, lazy and ignorant,” he said. “Maybe 60% of what we see has been thrown out by irresponsible, anti-social idiots – of which Britain has got many.”

The causes of roadside litter are varied. 

Alongside deliberate action, much waste blows off the back of trucks or lorries. Plus the endemic use of single-use plastics and excess packaging also plays a part in the problem.

“If we’re ever to have a chance of returning England to a clean and pleasant land. We have to start off with a mass cleanup,” said Read. “Britain’s problem is that has become a social norm that the country looks like a cesspit.”

In the meantime, ordinary people are left picking up the pieces – quite literally.

Volunteers organise clean-ups of their local area – often on the weekends – while groups such as Read’s raise awareness of the problem and put pressure on the authorities to act.

This week, Clean Up Britain launched a 10-point plan to clean up Britain’s roads, which advocated for several measures, including £1,000 (€1,135) fines for offenders, and printing vehicle registration plates on fast foot packaging as a way to shame culprits. 

‘Environmental anarchy’

According to Read, such volunteer action was needed amid an epidemic of inaction – by both local authorities and central government.

“I’m not surprised nothing happens,” said Read. “They [officials] are lacking inspiration. They’re lacking vision, they’re lacking energy, and lacking the ability to see the bigger picture as to what needs to be done.”

A Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs spokesperson said: “Littering blights our communities, spoils our countryside, harms our wildlife, and taxpayers’ money is wasted cleaning it up.”

“We are committed to supporting local councils to tackle littering – that is why we have awarded nearly £1m to help councils purchase new bins, provided powers to fines to those caught littering and shared guidance on effective enforcement.”

A litter strategy in England was first published by the government in 2017. It set out 36 “commitments and actions… “to clean up the country and the country and deliver a substantial reduction in litter and littering within a generation.”

“There’s absolutely zero leadership on this issue from the government. [Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] Thérèse Coffey has done nothing,” said Read.

“There’s an arrogant silence and a failure to engage with anyone that doesn’t suit their echo chamber”.

The government and water companies have come under fire for widespread endemic raw sewage leaks in Britain, which are threatening human health, marine life and fishing.

“It’s a state of anarchy that’s a searing indictment on the government that bangs on about… absolute rubbish,” Read told Euronews. “It’s all talk no action, which, of course, is what most politicians are about.” 

“They’ve completely failed.” 

In a statement sent to Euronews, National Highways Head of Customer Journeys, Freda Rashdi said: “Littering is a social problem across the country and we’re working hard to tackle it on our roads. We regularly carry out litter-picking activities across our roads and are actively exploring other initiatives to address this problem.”

“It includes using CCTV in A-road laybys to gather evidence to provide to local authorities, who can carry out enforcement, as well as installing larger bins.”

“But if people don’t drop litter in the first place it wouldn’t need to be picked up – so we urge road users to take their litter home instead of throwing it out of their windows,” she added.



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