The European Commission is asking the Slovak government to explain where the prosecutors ended up after the abolition of the Special Prosecutor’s Office and what is the guarantee that they will be able to continue solving existing cases until the legal proceedings are concluded. This is reported by Denník N. On March 28, the European Commission sent a letter to the Deputy Prime Minister responsible for the Recovery Plan, Petr Kmec (Hlas-SD), in which he formulated 15 detailed questions on the topic of the abolition of the Special Prosecutor’s Office and the further fate of special prosecutors. The Commission is concerned about whether Slovakia will be able to guarantee that funds from the Recovery and Resilience Plan of the Slovak Republic will not be stolen. The commission also considers another part of the government’s amendment to the Criminal Code as a problem, which, according to the letter, concerns “shortened sentences and limitation periods in the case of many crimes covered by the directive on the protection of financial interests and cases of high-level corruption under national law.” What is at stake is that Slovakia will lose 3.5 billion euros from the recovery plan, the newspaper reminds. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has not yet responded to the letter, the deadline is April 19.
.explanation by Martin Mojžiš:
This is a completely normal and natural concern of our government (the European one) about the actions of our government (the Slovak one). And a completely normal and natural attempt to give the Slovak government and its henchmen (e.g. the Prosecutor General) the last chance not to make corruption in the highest places completely impunity.
It is basically certain – it follows from the reactions to the previous letters and Fico’s videos – that the Slovak government takes the warnings of the European government (European Commission) seriously, but does not intend to follow them. Fico’s rhetoric is and will be like this: the EU, manipulated by PS plaintiffs, has decided not to give Slovak citizens the money that belongs to them.
The truth is, of course, the exact opposite. The EU has decided to save the money belonging to Slovak citizens from the corrupt Slovak government, which is consistently preparing space for opulent and impunity theft of this money. The European Commission does not punish us for the election results, the European Commission protects us from the increasingly obvious consequences of our choice.
In this context, this is not the first letter from the European Commission to the Slovak government. Slovakia has already sent three answers to Brussels, which, however, are insufficient according to the commission. For example, the Commission requests an answer to the question to which departments the special prosecutors from the dissolved Office of the Special Prosecutor’s Office were transferred. He asks “why the prosecutors from the Office of the Special Prosecution were not transferred to the departments that deal with crimes in the area of protection of financial interests and serious crimes in general”. She wants to know if the special prosecutors were also dismissed and she is also interested in the number of cases related to the financial interests of the European Union. Brussels is also asking for an answer to the question of what is the guarantee that prosecutors from the Office of the Special Prosecutor will continue to deal with their existing cases until the end of the trial. “If not, why can’t the special prosecutors also keep the cases that have been in preliminary proceedings since March 19, 2024?” the commission wants to know.
In the letter, the European Commission explains why it is linking the money from the recovery plan with the abolition of the Office of the Special Prosecutor and lower penalties for corruption. Slovakia is reminded that in the third chapter of the Recovery and Resilience Plan, it is committed to control the protection of the financial interests of the European Union. One of the specific points of this commitment is the existence of a special prosecutor’s office as a specialized body responsible for corruption and large-scale fraud, as well as for criminal acts damaging the Union’s financial interests.
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