Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico is hostile to non-governmental organizations.

Slovakia’s biggest high-level security conference will be held outside Bratislava for the first time this year – and that country’s Prime Minister Robert Fico is partly to blame. Politico writes about this.

It is noted that the decision of the event organizers from the GLOBSEC think tank to move the conference to Prague was caused by attacks by the Slovak government on non-governmental organizations.

“We had been thinking about postponing the conference for a long time due to logistics and capacity reasons, but this has sped up the process,” said the center’s communications director, Henrieta Kunova.

According to the publication, the current Bratislava GLOBSEC Forum will be held in Prague from August 30 to September 1. The headquarters of the center, which deals with foreign policy, security, European affairs and the economy, will remain in Bratislava.

The authors note that Fico has repeatedly spoken out against NGOs, promising to end the era of “NGO primacy” and redirect their funding to other organizations. He also hinted at the possibility of passing legislation that would declare NGOs foreign agents if they receive foreign funding.

“We expected that the government would not support us. But we have a diversified funding system, so the government gave us about 10 percent. This means that we can independently decide where we will hold our conference,” Kunova said.

Slovakia – latest news

Italy is taking away its air defense system from Slovakia; it is needed “elsewhere.” This was recently stated by Prime Minister Robert Fico.

He expressed dissatisfaction with this situation, asking “who will protect our nuclear power plants and other strategic facilities.”

also reported that Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar met with Lavrov and shook his hand. Slovak Prime Minister Fico, commenting on the meeting, said that it is an example of “our balanced and sovereign Slovak foreign policy on all sides of the world meeting.”