They are also cutting our budget. Your country is more polarized than the Netherlands

The Dutch public broadcaster NOS sent her to Slovakia shortly after the autumn elections, in which Smer won, and also now after the assassination attempt on Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.

Dutch journalist Charlotte Waaijers thinks that Slovakia was already polarized after the parliamentary elections, but now it has become even worse. “In the Netherlands, the atmosphere in society is not so extreme, but there are topics that divide society,” N. tells Denník.

“There is a kind of general feeling that something very fundamental is happening everywhere in Europe now,” he adds.

We also talked with the Dutch reporter about whether she fears that after Geert Wilders comes to power, the new government will also influence the events in the public broadcaster NOS, similar to what the current government in Slovakia is trying to do in the case of RTVS. “It is very difficult for me to imagine that it would be similar to Slovakia in the foreseeable future,” he says.

You were here for a report shortly after the Slovak elections, you also visited Robert Fico’s hometown. Now you came here after the attempt to assassinate the prime minister. Slovakia is a relatively small country on the eastern edge of the European Union and does not appear often in the Western media. Why did the Dutch public NOS send you here then?

When we were here after the election, we wanted to give a report in the Netherlands about what the abolition of your Office of the Specialist Prosecutor will mean. After the elections, everyone was watching what direction Slovakia would take and to what extent Fico’s government would adhere to democratic standards.

In general, it was interesting to see how quickly he acted. The Netherlands is a country that previously also closely followed what happened in Poland, what happened in Hungary, and everyone was interested in how things would change in Slovakia. So the main reason why we came here was to find out if the rule of law in Slovakia will change. We have also seen protests by people in the streets who are against these reforms. However, we were also very interested in how the people who support his government view these reforms, to try to understand whether there is much support for them in the country.

Their argument for abolishing the specialized prosecutor’s office was that almost no country has such a thing in its judicial system. What do you think about it? The European Commission is now threatening to withhold EU funds for these changes as well.

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