Robert Fico’s government is considering excluding NGOs from plans to combat disinformation, planning to abandon the previous “non-conceptual” action plan “with elements of politicisation”.
In response to the “obvious politicisation” of communication departments in ministries, the government office has proposed strategic communication that excludes NGO participation. The office’s representatives announced:
“The new concept no longer counts on NGOs as partners for solving this issue, which means that strategic communication will be exclusively in the hands of the state, under which it was always supposed to belong.”
The Slovak government believes that the original document did not comprehensively address the issue of strategic communication and that Slovak interests were only “marginally” taken into account.
Combating hybrid activities and disinformation is an important issue for Slovakia because its citizens are among those most likely to believe in conspiracies. It also borders war-ridden Ukraine.
The submission also proposes the cancellation of the “Action Plan for Coordinated Counteraction to Hybrid Threats 2022-2024,” as the government called the document “non-conceptual, unworkable with elements of politicisation”.
The ministers of interior, defence and foreign affairs will draft the new document.
In 2019, the non-governmental organisation Globsec stated that Slovakia is “significantly vulnerable to hybrid threats”. It cited the “insufficient strategic communication capacity” of state institutions as one of the main problems. The organisation praised the adoption of an action plan as a key step in countering threats.
Another problem reported by Globsec is the “lack of qualified professionals” in public administration, who have been leaving the civil service en masse since Smer came to power in October 2023, with many of them citing the current composition of the government as the reason.
The Fico government, on the other hand, calls them “political activists” who were supposed to “make sure that Slovaks have one obligatory correct opinion on topics such as the war in Ukraine, the EU, NATO, the migration crisis or alternative media.”
