EU member states face rule of law reckoning after ECJ ruling

After weeks of anticipation, the ECJ ruled on February 16^th that the EU has the authority to cut off funding for member states who do not meet the bloc’s rule of law standards. For the first time, the European court broadcast its ruling live, a sign of the decision’s landmark nature.

The ruling gives Brussels a powerful new tool to address failure to uphold the European Union’s core values, and MEPs called on Ursula von der Leyen to immediately deploy it. Given their alarming democratic backsliding, Hungary and Poland are unsurprisingly the two likeliest targets. Warsaw and Budapest, however, hardly have the monopoly on questionable governance, and the concrete fear of losing EU budget funds will hopefully pressure other countries with rule of law issues, including Slovakia and Slovenia, into cleaning up their act.

Slovakia: anti-corruption campaign derailed by political motivations

Indeed, while pundits have claimed that the Visegrad Four are splitting in two, with Hungary and Poland forming an illiberal axis while Czechia and Slovakia remain in the European orbit, the reality isn’t so cut and dry. Slovakia’s coalition government, led by the populist party OLaNO, is barely holding together and is resorting to increasingly problematic tactics to avoid snap elections which could see an OLaNO wipe-out.

The Slovakian government’s apparent weaponization of its promised anti-corruption campaign is particularly concerning. Anti-graft prosecutions increasingly appear like a settling of political scores, with government officials celebrating on social media as prosecutors roll out indictments against people connected to principal opposition parties Smer and HLAS. In one troubling sign, many of these prosecutions rely heavily on testimony from other indicted individuals turned government witness. In some cases, even this questionable evidence is in short supply; for example, the case against Juraj Kožuch, a former government official and head of an agency tasked with agricultural payments to farmers, is apparently based on the testimony of only one such flipped witness.

Irregularities with the prosecutors themselves, meanwhile, have kept raising eyebrows. Special prosecutor Daniel Lipšic courted controversy even at the time of his appointment in February 2021, with observers including Transparency International Slovakia warning that his myriad connections within the OLaNO-led government and the judiciary could fatally threaten the independence of any prosecutions Lipšic oversaw. The situation is even more troubling following the recent announcement that the police have opened a criminal prosecution against Lipšic over how he obtained the top-secret security clearance legally required to become special prosecutor.

Milan Krajniak, the Slovakian Labour Minister, interceded to secure the clearance for Lipšic

in an unusually short period of time, an intervention now under investigation as potential abuse of office. According to Smer leader Robert Fico, Lipšic and Krajniak coordinated to fraudulently invent a position for Lipšic at the Labour Ministry in order to obtain a clearance that he would not otherwise have been qualified for. Lipšic has insisted that the investigation into his security clearance won’t impact Slovakia’s anti-corruption drive, but his prosecution invariably adds to the questions swirling around an anti-graft push characterised by allegations of political persecution and reliance on evidence that Slovakian judges have warned may have been produced under duress.

Slovenia: Janez Janša adapts Viktor Orbán’s media capture tactics

If the red flags surrounding Slovakia’s anti-corruption prosecutions are particularly troubling because they recall the steady erosion of the independence of the judiciary in Poland and Hungary, Slovenia seems to be treading a similarly slippery slope.

The health of Slovenia’s democracy has significantly declined since Prime MinisterJanez Janšareturned to power in March 2020, with the country slumping in evaluations by international watchdogs, including Transparency International and Freedom House. In December 2021, the European Parliament approved a resolution warning over the state of European values in Slovenia for the first time, putting a grim capstone on the Slovenian Presidency of the EU and sending a signal that European politicians may not repeat the mistake of turning a blind eye as Viktor Orbán chipped away at Hungarian democracy.

In particular, Janša appears to be copying his Hungarian ally’s media capture strategies, embarking on a multipronged campaign to reshape Slovenia’s media landscape by politically interfering with the public broadcaster while cracking down on independent press coverage. Publicly proclaiming a “war on the media”, Janša held funding for public news agency STA

hostage for nearly a year after lambasting its coverage of a meeting between him and Orbán. The funding freeze brought STA to the brink of financial ruin, and while Ljubljana has finally resumed payments after intense pressure from the EU, STA’s roster of journalists was decimated by the financial squeeze.

Slovenia’s crackdown on the public press, which experts have warned could “give a lethal blow” to Slovenian democracy, has often become acutely personal. As part of the relentless attacks which eventually pushed STA director Bojan Veselinovič to resign, Janša himself tweeted out false allegations that Veselinovič had been a “collaborator” in the “murder” of former STA editor Borut Meško, who actually died of a terminal illness. Smear campaigns have also targeted journalists at public broadcaster RTV Slovenia, with executives such as TV programming director Natalija Gorščak fired in apparent retaliation for refusing to water down the institution’s independence.

There has also been a worrying uptick in SLAPP lawsuits against critics of the Slovenian government. Journalists working for the investigative news outlet Necenzurirano, for example, have been hit with a staggering 39 defamation lawsuits after reporting on an illegal loan which tax expert Rok Snežič allegedly tendered to Janša’s political party.

Ljubljana’s repression of the independent press is likely to ratchet up sharply in coming months, as Slovenia prepares for elections in April which could see Janša ousted. In a similar vein, Slovakia’s OLaNO will be tempted to press for continued prosecution of opposition figures as the spectre of snap elections looms. The EU has long been hamstrung in such cases, without effective tools to dissuade governments from eroding the rule of law—will its newfound power to withhold funding inspire closer adherence to European values from recalcitrant member states?

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