What Slovakia is writing about: Danko threatens not to open parliament. Taraba's ultimatum expires on the same day

The chairman of the Slovak National Party, Andrej Danko, said on Sunday that his party may refuse to support the opening of the next parliamentary session if Environment Minister Tomáš Taraba has not left office by then. The day by which Danko is demanding Taraba's departure is also the day scheduled for the start of that same session, namely 15 September. Slovak newsrooms made everything from a paralysed parliament to a one-sentence wire report out of it, and the difference in tone is greater than the difference in substance.

One Date With Two Meanings

Danko said this in the V politike programme on ta3, where he debated with Šimečka. "I can use one tool, which is that we will not open the session of the National Council. Until then, we can just keep banging our heads against the wall," he said. At the same time, he repeated that he does not want the government to fall, and said of Taraba that he is a thing of the past for SNS. ta3 ↗

The difference between the newsrooms lies in how seriously they take that sentence. ta3 turned it into a parliament-shutting move and reminded readers that the countdown is running down. The wire report carried by teraz.sk summed it up in the dry sentence that SNS will not support the start of the session because of its dispute with Taraba, without any evaluation. TASR ↗ Denník N built its headline on the idea that the target of the threat is not Taraba but the prime minister. Denník N ↗ Aktuality highlighted Danko's formulation that he does not want to bring down the government, but that, as he put it, time is running out between him and it. Aktuality.sk ↗ Postoj linked the threat to the name of a successor and wrote that Danko is insisting on Filip Kuffa. Postoj ↗

The most sceptical were the two politicians who debated with Danko that day. Šimečka offered a bet that Taraba would still be minister at the end of September. Christian Democratic Movement chairman Milan Majerský closed it with the sentence: "We still have ten days. I assume the two chairs of the coalition parties will somehow reach an agreement." So both read the threat as a bargaining position, not as an announcement. ta3 ↗

Political scientist Miroslav Řádek from Alexander Dubček University of Trenčín gave several newsrooms the same answer, from which each chose a different half. Both teraz.sk and Hospodárske noviny turned his words into the headline that SNS has a stronger position. Hospodárske noviny ↗ ta3 picked the opposite-sounding part from the same interview, namely that after returning to parliament Taraba will be loyal to the coalition, even if not to SNS proposals. ta3 ↗

Behind the Dispute Is Not One Thing, but a Series of Tenders

The dispute has been dragging on for months, and the Danube is its latest layer, not its first. It began with a proposal for national park zoning, continued with legal services for the environment ministry and the replacement of turbines in Gabčíkovo, which ta3 put at nearly half a billion euros. Most recently, SNS objected to the fact that cleaning up the Danube went to an Italian company for just under 70 million. ta3 ↗

Taraba responded on social media by arguing that the price had fallen from 140 million to less than 70, and that only Danko could be bothered by that. He then reminded SME who in the coalition had pushed through the purchase of American fighter jets. SME ↗ There is also personnel tension within the ministry itself, where state secretary Kuffa said publicly that the minister had stopped communicating with him and was excluding him from management meetings. Added to that was a warning from the European Commission, which according to Aktuality warned in an email of a possible threat to a 450 million euro payment from the recovery plan. Aktuality.sk ↗

Read also: What Slovakia is writing about: Pellegrini admitted a Smer government with PS. Šimečka called it absurd

The Interior Minister Went Through Two Studios and One Finding Was Not Mentioned There

Matúš Šutaj Eštok went through two discussion studios on Sunday. On Politika 24 on Joj 24 he announced that the director of the applications department and the project manager responsible for the road-camera project no longer work in their positions. He added a formulation worth noting, namely that those people had not failed procedurally and had done their work according to their employment contract, but that he expects his colleagues to work beyond their duties. He does not plan to bear political responsibility for the affair. TASR ↗

As for the cameras with Russian components, he said that it involved a trial run of two units, one of which stood in the supplier's premises, that they never transmitted data and that no security project was therefore required. According to the minister, the ministry had been cheated by the supplier, the cameras and the money were returned, and a new public procurement process will begin in the coming weeks. ta3 ↗

SME drew attention to another purchase without competition on the same day. According to the paper, the Ministry of the Interior did not buy only Russian cameras without a tender, but through an older contract with Soitron also a system for catching speeding drivers for 4.3 million euros. The Zastavme korupciu foundation, which published the affair on its website, will turn to the Public Procurement Office in this matter. Zastavme korupciu ↗ The ministry did not comment on this at the time the programmes were being broadcast. SME ↗

The sharper part of Sunday came with security. In the programme O 5 minút 12, Šutaj Eštok said that Slovakia is among the safest countries in the world and that he does not consider Russia an immediate threat, although he admitted that the country is the target of influence operations by several intelligence services. Majerský sat next to him and argued the opposite, namely that Slovakia is threatened, that Germany named the Russian threat openly, and that Slovakia is pretending it does not concern it. He therefore called for a Security Council meeting. SITA ↗ Meanwhile, the Slovensko movement announced that it will try once again to push for the minister's dismissal. SME ↗

The Transaction Tax Came Back Into Play and Hlas Lost the Topic

On Saturday Fico hinted that the abolition of the transaction tax from January 2027, which he himself announced at the end of August, may not yet be final. On Sunday everyone commented on it, each in a different way. Šutaj Eštok framed it as a question of whether the measure has support across society. Hospodárske noviny ↗ Danko used the image that he could not call the prime minister in the evening, which killed off that tax. Denník N ↗

The most interesting angle came this morning from Štandard. It points out that the abolition of the transaction tax was originally a Hlas topic, one through which it wanted to distinguish itself economically from Smer after bearing the political cost of consolidation alongside it. Minister of Economy Denisa Saková presented pro-growth measures, Tomáš Drucker described the tax as a barrier to business, and when the abolition came four months later, Fico announced it. Štandard ↗

On the budget, Šimečka reminded readers that under the constitutional law on budget responsibility the government must submit a proposal for a balanced budget for 2027, and he voiced suspicion of a deliberate increase in the deficit. In the same debate, Danko pushed for a balanced budget and at the same time for tax relief. Hospodárske noviny ↗

The Opposition Both Quarrelled and Agreed on the Same Day

Freedom and Solidarity chairman Branislav Gröhling took a much tougher line toward Fico's Vision of Slovakia 2040 than the rest of the opposition. He did not criticise the document itself and respects the work of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, but he described its presentation as political theatre and said the opposition should not act as Fico's supporting cast. Plus jeden deň ↗

Majerský objected with the sentence that Gröhling will not decide what KDH will or will not do. "We were not in government with Fico, we did not bring down three governments like SaS, but unlike them we care about the development of Slovakia," he added. SITA ↗

On the same day, SaS MP Alojz Hlina and Marián Čaučík from KDH appeared together at a press conference at the end of Agrokomplex in Nitra and, together with Progressive Slovakia, announced that they want to jointly seek solutions for agriculture and open the topic at the September session. Hlina justified this by saying that the centre-right opposition parties should send a signal that they are capable of working together. SME ↗ At the same time, Šimečka definitively closed the topic opened by the president last week, namely that Progressive Slovakia will not govern with Smer under any circumstances. SITA ↗

Under the Radar

The debate about local government reform on Sunday shifted from merging municipalities to regions. The president of the Union of Towns of Slovakia, Richard Rybníček, said that the problem is not the number of small municipalities but the higher territorial units, which do not copy the historical division of the territory, and that reforming or abolishing them would save more than merging municipalities. Aktuality.sk ↗ By coincidence, Sunday also marked exactly 36 years since the adoption of the Act on Municipal Establishment, and on the anniversary the chairman of the Association of Towns and Municipalities of Slovakia, Jozef Božik, reminded readers that the system of local government competences needs to be modernised and made clearer. TASR ↗

The Ministry of Defence plans to return military training to the former Javorina military area. Minister Robert Kaliňák clarified that the ministry wants to use its own facilities for standard training and manoeuvre movement, but does not plan to restore the entire former area. Aktuality.sk ↗

Progressive Slovakia MPs are proposing that citizens should not pay administrative fees for paper extracts and submissions when state electronic services suffer technical outages. TASR ↗

The weekly Trend points to a cost that does not appear in political debate at all. If today's market rates are reflected in the debt portfolio, the state's annual interest costs could reach 2.9 billion euros according to the Council for Budget Responsibility, or about 800 million more than in 2025. In per-capita terms, that is 535 euros a year paid only for old debts, even before the costs of population ageing. Trend ↗

The Trnava Regional Court published a 39-page explanation of why it overturned the refusal of Mikuláš Černák's request for parole from life imprisonment and ordered the matter to be heard again. The court criticised the district court's method of evaluating expert reports and ordered that Černák's personality be examined by an expert institute. He will therefore not be released any time soon. SME ↗

What Hotinfo Is Watching