{"id":305680,"date":"2025-07-31T04:20:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T04:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/305680\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T04:20:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T04:20:10","slug":"france-rejects-ficos-claims-of-foreign-pressure-on-top-slovak-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/305680\/","title":{"rendered":"France rejects Fico\u2019s claims of foreign pressure on top Slovak court"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nBRATISLAVA \u2013 Slovakia\u2019s Constitutional Court and the French Embassy to the country have pushed back against accusations by Prime Minister Robert Fico, who claimed foreign ambassadors attempted to influence a politically sensitive case.<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\nIn a Facebook post on Wednesday, Fico\u2019s Smer-SD party published<\/a> a photo of ambassadors from the UK, France, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg meeting with Constitutional Court President Ivan Fia\u010dan, calling the visits \u201csuspicious\u201d as the court reviews a controversial law on NGO transparency<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\nA day earlier, Fico alleged<\/a> that the diplomats were pressuring the court to rule the law unconstitutional.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe French embassy firmly denied the allegation, clarifying that the meeting in question took place in March, before the law had even been adopted, and was publicly shared at the time.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe Embassy does not interfere in the internal affairs of the Slovak Republic and therefore did not attempt to influence the President of the Court on a law that had not yet been adopted at the time of the meeting,\u201d the Embassy wrote on Wednesday<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\nIt added that meetings between ambassadors and judicial officials are standard diplomatic practice and said the goal was to foster cooperation between Slovakia\u2019s Constitutional Court and France\u2019s Constitutional Council as a way to strengthen the rule of law.\n<\/p>\n

\nSlovakia\u2019s Constitutional Court also dismissed Fico\u2019s claim, saying<\/a> it does not tolerate attempts to discredit its work and never discusses ongoing cases with third parties.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cFalse and baseless statements targeting the court constitute a serious and unacceptable attack on judicial impartiality and independence, contradict the principles of the rule of law, and unjustifiably undermine the constitutional order of the Slovak Republic,\u201d it said.\n<\/p>\n

\nFico\u2019s accusations came as he also claimed<\/a> the UK had interfered in Slovakia\u2019s elections – an allegation strongly denied by London.\n<\/p>\n

\nOpposition party Progressive Slovakia suggested<\/a> Fico is trying to deflect attention from unpopular government plans, such as a reported VAT increase to 25% VAT, which the finance ministry has so far denied.\n<\/p>\n

\n(de)\n<\/p>\n

\n(Nat\u00e1lia Silensk\u00e1, Euractiv.sk)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRATISLAVA \u2013 Slovakia\u2019s Constitutional Court and the French Embassy to the country have pushed back against accusations by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-305680","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114945933883648202","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}