In Slovakia, thousands of people gathered again on Saturday in Bratislava to protest against the planned reform of the national public channel RTVS.
In Slovakia, the government’s reform plan consisting of renaming the public channel RTVS to STaR (“Slovak Television and Radio”) is not being implemented.
Thousands of people made it known by demonstrating once again in Bratislava this Saturday.
The reform is expected to result in the dismissal of most of its senior staff, including its director. And a new boss should be appointed by a board elected partly by the culture ministry, partly by parliament, where the ruling coalition clearly has a majority. Thus, according to the protesters, despite the multi-step process, the management of the company will end up under the control of Robert Fico’s cabinet anyway.
Since the announcement of this project, some 600 RTVS employees signed a declaration against the reform.
And this is, according to the protesters, a direct violation of EU law, namely the European Media Freedom Act of 2022, which requires transparent and impartial appointment of the management of public broadcasters and clearly prohibits the dismissal of already appointed civil servants before the end of their mandate.
Michal Šimečka, leader of Progressive Slovakia (one of the parties behind the protests) claimed that this is exactly the way “all autocrats follow” and that if Slovakia went further down this path, it would end up like Hungary or even like Belarus.