EU to release €799M to Slovakia after rule-of-law dispute

BRUSSELS — The European Union is releasing €799 million in grants to Slovakia after a long-standing dispute over threats to rule of law, the bloc’s executive arm ruled on Tuesday.

The payment to Slovakia, which comes from the EU-wide Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) pot of €800 billion, had been blocked by the European Commission as a way to put pressure on the government of Robert Fico, a pro-Moscow politician from the leftist-populist Smer party. His ruling coalition has made attempts to control the public media, has abolished a special prosecutor’s office and parroted Russian propaganda in recent months.

Recent efforts from the Slovakian parliament “alleviated some of the Commission’s concerns,” Commission spokeswoman Veerle Nuyts said in a statement, but there are still “pending issues” and “ongoing discussions.”

Fico set off familiar alarms in Brussels when his ruling coalition started introducing changes in the criminal code and abolished the special prosecutor’s office in 2023. Both measures were seen as eroding the bloc’s rule-of-law standards and following Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s playbook when it comes to illiberal views; and they led to the Commission’s threats to cut funds.

The Commission has been pressured to make sure taxpayers’ money is well spent since the number of fraud investigations related to the EU’s recovery fund soared in 2023, according to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office — which is responsible for investigating and prosecuting crimes against the bloc’s financial interests — in its annual report.

The European Parliament has demanded that the executive arm show teeth on rule-of-law issues, following the decision to unlock billions of EU funds earmarked for Hungary that had been frozen over concerns about judicial independence.

Investigations by the Slovak prosecutor’s office, which opened in 2004, led to numerous convictions in high-profile corruption cases, many of which were linked to Fico’s ruling Smer party during his previous terms as prime minister — he had to resign after the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciák and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová prompted the largest protests since the 1989 Velvet Revolution when Slovaks took to the streets to demand the ouster of the communist Czechoslovak regime.

Again in 2024, Fico’s criminal code reform sparked large protests across the country and angered the opposition.