LIVE German 2025 Election Results

Published on
20/04/2026 – 21:32 GMT+2

Slovakia will hold a referendum in summer to decide whether to cancel lifelong payments for Prime Minister Robert Fico and other leaders after their terms in office expire, the country’s president said on Monday.

According to President Peter Pellegrini, the vote is scheduled to take place on 4 July.

At the same time, Slovaks will also vote on whether to reopen the office of the special prosecutor that used to deal with major crime and corruption.

The referendum follows a petition organised by the Democrats, a non-parliamentary pro-Western opposition party, and signed by more than 350,000 citizens, the threshold required by law.

However, Pellegrini said the referendum would not ask people whether they support an early parliamentary election.

Based on a 2021 ruling by the country’s highest legal authority, the Constitutional Court, such a question is unconstitutional, he said.

Slovak prime ministers and parliament speakers who served at least two terms in office receive a lifelong payment, a monthly sum that equals the salaries of lawmakers in Parliament, as part of measures to boost security for leading politicians.

The payments were introduced following a 2024 assassination attempt on Fico, who was shot and gravely wounded at a pre-election event, shocking the country and reverberating across Europe. Before, the benefit was provided only to former presidents.

Later in 2024, Slovak lawmakers approved a plan by Fico’s coalition government to abolish the special prosecutor’s office, which handled serious crimes such as graft, organised crime and extremism.

The legislation faced sharp criticism at home and abroad while thousands of Slovaks repeatedly took to the streets to protest against the law. A number of people linked to Fico’s party faced prosecution in corruption scandals.

Only one referendum in Slovakia’s history, the 2003 vote on the country’s European Union membership, was successful. Others failed due to low turnout.

Fico has been a divisive figure since returning to power in 2023. There have been numerous protests against his perceived pro-Russia stance.

Additional sources • AP

Published on
20/04/2026 – 21:34 GMT+2

In late 2023, the Polish prime minister wrote the modern playbook on unwinding years of entrenched illiberal rule. Now, Magyar is looking to apply it, especially as the two leaders expressed a similar to-do list across three key areas.

To bypass an opposition president, Andrzej Duda, Tusk’s government used a parliamentary resolution to instantly dismiss state broadcast management, literally taking the network offline overnight. Magyar is threatening the exact same shock therapy.

Following a heated interview last week on public television, which he likened to North Korean propaganda, he explicitly vowed to suspend the national broadcaster’s actual signal the moment he takes office.

And for the judiciary, both leaders made joining the European Public Prosecutor’s Office a day-one priority, reversing their predecessors’ refusals to participate.

Tusk is still struggling to implement a full judicial reform. He has faced severe gridlock, requiring complex legal acrobatics to bypass presidential vetoes. Magyar, however, wields a two-thirds constitutional majority. EU officials are already in Budapest negotiating the release of €10.4bn in recovery funds, knowing Magyar has the parliamentary numbers to push the necessary reforms.

Finally, Tusk rapidly purged the management boards of state-owned enterprises, with the oil giant Orlen being the most famous example.

And Magyar is preparing a similar sweep across Hungary’s state-backed institutions. He plans to recover state assets and cut funding to ideological networks like Mathias Corvinus Collegium, or MCC.

However, this strategy could have downsides. Rushing invites legal missteps and advocates of the outgoing governments argued that neither Orbán nor Morawiecki directly obstructed the transition.

One thing is certain: from illiberal to liberal transitions, the new approach seems to rely on shock therapy to dismantle the old system overnight.

Watch the EU News video in the player above for the full story.