Slovakia

01From institutional to real-life capture

Only those areas with significant developments are covered below; the others remain relatively unchanged since the last report.

Public Service MediaEMFA Art. 5

The most visible development over the last year is the deterioration of the quality of public service broadcasting. This comes after the previous institution, Radio and Television of Slovakia (RTVS), was dismantled and replaced with a new one, STVR, with financing completely dependent on political decisions and a new structure for appointing the management. In STVR’s bodies, there is no space for opposition or independent experts: all members of its Board are nominees of the government, either directly (through the ministries of culture and finance) or through the governing majority in Parliament.

An important new development is that this structure of the STVR Board has been challenged¹ before the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic as clearly violating European regulation. In February 2026, the court announced that it was referring a preliminary question to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)² on the interpretation of the EMFA, especially on how to interpret the requirement of functional independence of public service media. As the CJEU is expected to provide an authoritative interpretation, it could lead to changes being required to align domestic legislation with EMFA rules. However, the court assessment prolongs the process and means that the ruling of the Slovak Constitutional Court will be postponed, and the decision will come only after the damage to the institution is already very serious.

The STVR Board elected a new general director, Martina Flašíková, the daughter of a late political strategist for the ruling Smer party and a close government ally, in May 2025 in a closed-door vote. Journalists and members of the public were excluded from the election process, despite constitutional guarantees of public access to such hearings. Under Flašíková’s leadership, critical journalists were fired, and several programmes were terminated, which led more employees to leave the institution. As a consequence, the effects on editorial independence and the quality of news became apparent as early as autumn 2025.

An NGO monitoring media in Slovakia, Memo 98, published the results of their content analysis of STVR news coverage³, concluding that political news coverage was dominated by governmental and coalition views and arguments, while opposition voices and context were frequently missing. It provided empirical evidence of problems with impartiality and pluralism in STVR’s output.

Moreover, other monitoring institutions, both domestic and international, have concluded that STVR is biased. In April 2026, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Transparency International Slovakia and the justice-oriented NGO Via Iuris, together with Memo 98, formally addressed a complaint to the STVR Board and to the regulator, the Council for Media Services. They claimed that STVR is violating Slovak law,⁴ requiring impartiality and objectivity in broadcasting, as well as the EMFA. They supplied the regulator with several empirical studies on the broadcaster’s bias, mostly from Transparency International Slovakia, and documented 15 cases of STVR allegedly breaching the law.

In July 2026, the regulator started formal proceedings in only one of these cases, dismissing the rest. The Council for Media Services admitted⁵ that eight other cases were “problematic” but “not reaching threshold” for review.

The organisations published a statement in which they criticised this decision and referred to the Council’s own lawyers, who had advised the Council members that at least two of the cases against STVR documented potentially illegal conduct.

The STVR Board discussed the complaints but did not issue any formal statement. One of its members, David Lindtner (at the same time an adviser to the Prime Minister), commented that the complaining organisations were political activists. RSF and the others later received a letter⁶ from the STVR Board backing the STVR management.

In autumn 2026, the Council for Media Services decided on a different complaint, sanctioning STVR for non-objectivity in a case of a political debate, where a journalist in the studio sided with the pro-governmental views, even when the ratio of pro-governmental vs. oppositional guests of a discussion was 3:1.⁷

There were more cases documenting how the capture manifested itself in practice: an episode of STVR’s investigative programme Reporteri was stopped⁸; the vice-president of the STVR Board repeatedly put pressure on the institution’s HR policy⁹; and there were repeated layoffs¹⁰ of critical journalists¹¹, including several union members¹² who had protested against the political capture of the institution. Together with financing tied to political decisions, a politically captured STVR Board, and an Ethics Committee that includes controversial and pro-government¹³ figures, some with pro-Russian ties,¹⁴ this creates an alarming picture of political interference and influence on public broadcasting in Slovakia, and an example of media capture. This is reflected in STVR’s decreasing trustworthiness¹⁵, as shown in several¹⁶ reports. Prominent TV creators, including an award-winning director and well-known actors, announced a boycott of STVR¹⁷ and its productions. As a result, STVR currently represents a political communication tool in the hands of pro-government interests, rather than an independent institution required by the EMFA. As one of the most serious attacks on independent public broadcasting in the EU, this requires strong action from the European Commission to enforce EMFA rules.

Regulatory AuthorityAVMSD Art. 30

Another important development is the debate around the media regulator, the Council for Media Services. The governing coalition has effectively captured the regulator by appointing new members, several of them controversial figures, some with non-transparent political connections. The members of the Council elected a new head of the institution, Michal Dzurjanin, who is known for the political capture of the public service broadcaster RTVS under the previous Smer-led government in 2017. Following this appointment, the chief of staff at the Council, Martin Dorociak, was fired, despite his good reputation and professionalism, and the impartiality of the staff’s output. One of the Council members, the former journalist Adam Valček, published a dissenting opinion¹⁸ explaining that the dismissal of Dorociak could have been illegal and based on a pretext. In September 2026, a new chief of staff was elected, with no previous experience in the field of media law. The Council’s reserved approach to the complaint by RSF and others against STVR, described above, could be a consequence of this capture. Memo 98¹⁹ characterised it as evidence of a worrying weakness in independent oversight.

Capturing the regulator creates a loop in the mechanism of media capture. The government captured STVR as an institution, its editorial output changed, and the government then captured the regulator whose role is to oversee and judge the balance of that editorial content. This is even more worrying given that the private TV market is also captured through various oligarchic and political connections of the owners (overall, the four biggest owners command around 60 percent of audiences²⁰ in the TV, radio and newspaper markets), and, again, the only institution in charge of their regulation, oversight and licensing is the Council for Media Services.

Moreover, the Slovak National Party (SNS), a minority partner in the governing coalition, has proposed a different model of media governance: renaming the Council as the National Media Authority and centralising power in the hands of its head.²¹ This, however, was blocked by other members of the coalition²², who said it would create a “censorship office”. The European Commission had intervened as well²³, and the legislation was first postponed until the proposal met the requirements of European law, which did not happen. The MPs who proposed it took it back in September 2026.²⁴

Misuse of state funds and ownership transparency and pluralismEMFA Art. 6, 22 & 25

There were no major changes in media ownership transparency and pluralism, or in the distribution of state advertising. Parliament formally amended the law concerning state advertising in November 2025, strengthening the oversight role of the Council for Media Services, but this remains on paper. The core tool for transparency in state advertising should be a central register. Like the media ownership register, it still does not exist in practice, a gap the European Commission criticised in its Rule of Law Report on Slovakia in July 2026.²⁵

Other than that, attacks on journalists remained a serious problem. The Investigative Centre of Ján Kuciak (ICJK) recorded 77 attacks or incidents against journalists in 2025, a slight increase from 74 cases in 2024. These included 35 threats, three death threats and three abusive lawsuits.²⁶ Many of these attacks target the independent, non-oligarchic media, which have a strong presence online and in print: the daily SME, with a strong online presence; Aktuality, the most-visited online news site; and Denník N, a small independent daily with a strong base of online subscribers.²⁷

The Slovak government is part of the problem by ignoring the independent media, not answering some of their questions and interview requests or targeting them with smear campaigns. In one prominent case, a criminally prosecuted far-right extremist, Daniel Bombic,²⁸ known for having cyberbullied²⁹ journalists, received legal help from a law firm co-owned by Robert Kaliňák, the minister of defense and a prominent Smer politician.

This creates an atmosphere in which verbally or physically attacking journalists in the street becomes acceptable to government supporters. In one especially serious case, in January 2026, the SME daily’s political columnist Peter Schutz was beaten³⁰ in the toilet of a shopping mall, suffering a serious leg injury that required hospitalisation. The attack occurred shortly after coalition politicians slammed Schutz for his commentary against Smer voters.

The only uncaptured institution left in the country that helps to mitigate the media capture is the justice system. Two landmark cases of prominent journalists show that the courts often back the freedom of the press against SLAPPs or capture. The editor-in-chief of Aktuality.sk, Peter Bárdy, was sued by Prime Minister Fico over the cover photo of a book Bárdy wrote about Fico. The Prime Minister demanded EUR 200,000 in damages, but he ultimately lost the case³¹ in 2026.

Another prominent case is Michal Kovačič vs TV Markíza. Markíza is the most popular commercial TV station, captured by an oligarchic family with state-business ties. Kovačič protested against “censorship and Orbanisation” during a live broadcast in 2025; he was fired, but then sued the station and won the case³² in the first instance, although the station can still appeal.

02Has the situation improved?

03Outstanding problems

Media regulatorsAVMSD Art. 30

The Council for Media Services now has a coalition-appointed majority and a chair associated with the earlier capture of public television. It dismissed its chief of staff on what one member called a pretext, appointed a successor with no media law experience, and declined to act on most complaints against STVR. As the sole regulator of both public and private broadcasters, its capture closes the loop. The plan for a centralised National Media Authority has been postponed, not abandoned.

Public service mediaEMFA Art. 5

All STVR Board members are nominated by the government or its parliamentary majority, funding depends on political decisions, and news coverage favours the governing coalition. Critical journalists and union members continue to be dismissed, and the constitutional challenge to STVR’s governance will not be decided until the CJEU answers the Constitutional Court’s question.

Misuse of state fundsEMFA Art. 25

The update records no significant change in this area. The 2025 report found state advertising allocated without a central database, criteria or oversight, with evidence of preferential funding for pro-government outlets, and no rules have since been introduced to change this.

Ownership transparency and pluralismEMFA Art. 6 & 22

The four largest owners control around 60 percent of TV, radio and newspaper audiences, and private broadcasters are tied to oligarchic and political interests, as the dismissal of Michal Kovačič at Markíza showed. The 2025 report’s concerns about the non-functional media register and the lack of a pluralism test in merger control remain. Independent outlets such as SME, Aktuality and Denník N are the main targets of government smears, and the ICJK recorded 77 attacks and incidents against journalists in 2025.