Slovakia: Government cracking down on nonprofits

In this test of its resilience, the civil society sector in Slovakia can come to its own aid by drawing on its experience with the authoritarian period under the Vladimír Mečiar administration in the 1990s. “We have more experience with this than they do in Czechia,” says Katka Batková, director of Via Iuris in Slovakia, in an interview for Czech news server HlidaciPes.org.

Q: How has the atmosphere changed in Slovakia toward nonprofit organizations after last year’s elections to the legislature and the accession of the administration of Robert Fico? Long before the elections it could be heard in the campaign by Fico’s party, Smer, that if it got a chance it would “clean house” in the nonprofit sector in particular.

A: The atmosphere has basically not changed. The narrative about bad NGOs, or some political, Soros-sponsored NGOs, has long been present in that sector and the public space. The first time it was used by the Government was probably after the murder of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová, when for the first time, politicians and representatives of the administration began to publicly speculate that there was somebody behind the protests of the “For a Decent Slovakia” movement, controlling it all from abroad, financing it from abroad and so forth.

Q: There was that infamously “suspicious” pile of paving stones near the Office of the Government to which Fico drew attention…

A: Yes, or claims that the badges with the likenesses of Ján and Martina which spread all over Slovakia had been printed “too quickly”. In other words, these repeated, frontal, verbal attacks on civil society first started back then, essentially they never left the public space. After the elections nothing has changed in that regard, but naturally government policy has.

Q: Fico’s cabinet tried from the start to immediately change the system for revenue allocation, i.e., the option for taxpayers to donate 2 % of their taxes to the nonprofit of their choice. The option was not meant to be revoked, but people were supposed to choose between two options, which seemed to be a bit of an extortion tactic – either send 2 % to a nonprofit or to your own parents’ pensions.

A: It wasn’t abolished outright, but basically yes, it was, in a roundabout way. Such organizations were certainly going to lose out, not just because people naturally would choose to send money to their own parents, but also because those organizations found themselves in the position of asking people not to send money to their own parents, but to us NGOs instead, which is absurd. Through revenue allocation, roughly EUR 90 million annually flows to civil society organizations. Half comes from individual revenue and half from incorporated entities. What was endangered was the revenue from individual contributions, not the contributions from incorporated entities. However, we don’t believe the current state of affairs is permanent. The administration will certainly come back to those measures.

At the mercy of the ministry

Q: Why did that change ultimately not go through? The Fico administration so far gives the impression of being a steamroller that won’t shy away from even the most controversial measures.

A: Pressure from the public. Civil society did a lot of work to show the public the impact that would have. We essentially have four big recipients of those donations, and they are mainly groups which work with cancer patients, or the organization Plamínek, which is dedicated to pediatric palliative care, and they use the money they receive from that revenue to aid people directly. That makes it terribly easy to explain that if you take that 2 % of tax revenue away from those organizations, then you’re taking it away from your own people who are sick with cancer or who need aid because their children are dying. There was enormous pressure from the public, created by those organizations when they started to inform the public about what they do for that money, pressure which hadn’t been absolutely necessary before.

Q: Those changes didn’t go through, but nonprofit organizations have been affected by across-the-board cuts to their subsidies. A lot has been written in Czechia about the cancellation of Culture Ministry subsidies under the Culture Minister Martina Šimkovičová, who has abolished the program supporting media literacy, for example. What is it like today in Slovakia with the subsidies in various sectors – has there been a change in the flow of funding towards the new administration’s “favorites”?

A: No, that’s not happening, I believe the cuts are more or less across the board. It wasn’t that selected NGOs were harmed, but everything was cut for everybody. Even in the area of culture, it wasn’t about whether the money should go to schools or LGBTI+ organizations, but it was actually across-the-board budget cuts. The most dangerous change now is to the Endowment for the Arts, where the redistribution of the money has completely changed and has been moved from commissions of experts who are independent to the endowment’s management, which is completely controlled by the Culture Ministry, the political power. That is probably the biggest change. This year the money was essentially redistributed according to the old system still. The law will soon take effect, which means we will see the impact next year. Cuts were also made to subsidies at the Environment Ministry, the Foreign Affairs Ministry, and the Ministry of Regional Development.

Q: The main legislative measure of the new Government of Slovakia with respect to the nonprofit sector is an amendment to the law on nongovernmental organizations. The administration withdrew it from the June session of the legislature, so it will not be debated until the fall. The bill is drawing attention mainly because of its designating as an “organization with support from abroad” those NGOs which have part of their income streams from donors abroad. However, from your insider perspective, there will obviously be even more problematic points in this legislation…

A: Apart from that designation, naturally, there is the expansion of the ministry’s obligation to monitor the content of NGOs’ annual reports. It will introduce an obligation on civil society which heretofore was not required by law, it was just voluntary, to publish annual reports when an association made or received more than EUR 50,000 annually for its activity. So you will have to publish an annual report and the ministry, as the law is currently formulated, will be able to monitor its content. If it ascertains some inconsistencies, it will ask the association to resolve them, and if the association cannot, it will be dissolved by direct decision of the Interior Ministry. There are no criteria there, no specification regarding the content the ministry is meant to monitor in the annual reports, there is no opportunity for a civic association to defend itself against the correction proposed by the ministry, there isn’t even a reasonable time period established for negotiating this with the ministry. In other words, the ministry can dissolve a civic association straightaway, without fining it or anything else.

Creating conflict and an enemy

Q: Why do you believe the Government is doing this? Just because it can?

A: I believe the current political representation and some opposition representatives are pushing for the politics of conflict, which means that the creation and cultivation of conflict and an enemy in this society suits them to a certain extent so they can be elected. They need to show their voters who is to blame for their problems. In the past, this role was played by various marginalized groups, excluded ones, ethnic groups, migrants and so forth. Every Government is different, and this one has so far chosen the media and NGOs financed from abroad as the enemy. We believe this is actually about building up the “enemy within” so the Government can then take action against it, lawfully, in a relatively simple way, and thereby show the voters that it’s solving their problems.

Q: The current Fico administration is also, according to you, the very first one in the history of Slovakia, including his own past three cabinets, to not espouse cooperation with the civil society sector. Is it actually the case that no such wording appears at all in the program declaration?

A: It’s there, but in the following context: Transparent financing of civic associations is necessary, we want to create a state fund to support the NGO sector where we will support organizations which provide aid, and there is a need to assess how big of a risk civil society organizations pose to society and how to address and ameliorate that risk. Last but not least, it is necessary to regulate the involvement of civil society organizations in lobbying and political life. That means it’s not completely missing from the program declaration, but the way it is being mentioned is absolutely new. Before this there was always something like: “The Government commits itself to the principles of open governance, of transparency, and of supporting cooperation and dialogue with civil society.”

Q: Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová’s term is over. She worked in the nonprofit sector herself before taking office and also collaborated for a long time with your organization, Via Iuris. How much does the person of the president influence the atmosphere in the country toward nonprofits and how do you believe that will change under the new head of state, Peter Pellegrini?

A: The fact that Zuzana Čaputová came from the civil society sector and has long been active in it naturally means she understood it much better than any president before or since, including Pellegrini. She frequently took advantage of her expertise on civil society organizations to raise subjects in the public space, such as combating violence against women, or issues around the climate crisis and the environment, as well as protecting the rule of law. I believe such cooperation between civil society and the president was unique for that reason. At the same time, it was clear she values our work and she frequently expressed appreciation for it, stood up for it if there were attacks on specific organizations.

Slovak nonprofits more active than those in Czechia

Q: Is it possible to compare the nonprofit sectors in Czechia and Slovakia in some kind of rough outline? What I mean is their resilience should a political configuration come to power in Czechia similar to the one in Slovakia, where the war on nonprofits is now on the agenda.

A: I probably don’t have as much information about the Czech scene as I would need for that. The truth is that individual philanthropy is less developed in Slovakia. However, it is developing and it’s not the case that we are dependent just on the 2 % of revenue allocated to us. The amount of money being sent to NGOs by people through online portals such as Darujme (Let’s Donate) or StartLab keeps growing. From recent activity I’d like to highlight the collection to send ammunition to Ukraine, where the Slovaks raised more than EUR 4 million, which is more than the Government of Slovenia donated, for example. I think the experience of the Mečiar era here was formative for many nonprofits, enough for them to know what awaits them, it’s not just about providing social services here and now, but also about standing up for other organizations, thinking a bit more broadly.

Q: Is that meant to sound optimistic?

A: Yes, it’s more active than in Czechia. I have the sense that Czech civil society is paradoxically more dependent on state money, less prepared to be defiant, and in Slovakia we have more experience with that because of our past. That can be seen in all the activities, petitions and protests which we have managed to organize during the last seven months. It’s an unbelievable amount of work.