What Slovakia is writing about: Fico wants to abolish the transaction tax. Hlas proposes a referendum on shortening the parliamentary term

Prime Minister Robert Fico asked Finance Minister Ladislav Kamenický to prepare the complete abolition of the transaction tax from January 2027, the measure his government introduced last spring as a pillar of consolidation. On the same day, coalition Hlas submitted a constitutional amendment that would make it possible to shorten parliamentary terms by referendum, but the party chair did not attend the press conference on it. And the project for a new nuclear source formally moved under the Government Office, with the state wanting full ownership of JESS.

The tax the prime minister called impossible to abolish is set to end

On Monday, Fico announced that he had asked Kamenický and the finance ministry's state secretary Radovan Majerský to prepare legislative and technical steps to abolish the transaction tax effective from 1 January 2027. He announced it in a Facebook post after talks on the 2027 budget and added that he expects support from social partners as well as coalition and opposition parties. According to him, abolishing the tax will lead to "unprecedented economic growth in the Slovak Republic". Postoj ↗ Štandard ↗

The difference between the outlets is not what happened, but what matters about it. SME and HN focus on the suddenness of the reversal, Denník N on its scope, namely that after sole traders the tax will also end for companies. Regional outlets of Petit Press and Prešovak remind readers that the prime minister himself called the measure impossible to abolish and is now scrapping it a year before the parliamentary elections. In the same text, Postoj summed up why the tax was controversial from the start, namely that the parameters were changed at the last minute and that, besides Slovakia, a similar tax exists only in Hungary and Venezuela. SME ↗ HN ↗ Denník N ↗ Prešovak ↗

The question nobody in government answered on Monday is the shortfall. The tax has been paid since April 2025, sole traders stopped paying it at the start of this year, and Kamenický said not long ago that its abolition would have to be offset by other fiscal measures. "The transaction tax is not a sacred cow for me. If the budget were to stand on it, I would be willing to sacrifice it," he said then. Analysts quoted by Denník N speak of a half-billion shortfall and are asking precisely about the compensation that Fico did not specify. Štandard ↗ Denník N ↗

Coalition and opposition parties welcome the abolition, while the opposition also criticizes the government for having introduced the tax in the first place. SaS chair Branislav Gröhling summed it up most sharply when he called Fico a hypocrite who had been choking entrepreneurs for two years. Employers, including Club 500 led by Vladimír Soták, welcomed the abolition but immediately added that it is not enough on its own and that they expect further pro-growth measures. STVR ↗ HN ↗ HN ↗

Hlas proposes a referendum on early elections. The party leader did not come to the press conference

On Monday, coalition Hlas submitted to the National Council a draft constitutional amendment that would allow the parliamentary term to be ended early by a valid referendum. Speaker Richard Raši also presented safeguards against abuse, namely that the initiators would have to deliver the petition with signatures to the president within six months of collecting the first signature and that a referendum could not be called in either the first or the last year of the parliamentary term. Štandard ↗ TASR ↗

Pravda added the arithmetic that makes the proposal something other than a coalition initiative. A constitutional change requires a three-fifths majority, that is 90 votes, so it will not pass without the opposition. Moreover, this is not the only proposal on the table. The coalition council is also to deal with a different Smer variant submitted by Justice Minister Boris Susko, so the coalition has two different proposals on the same issue. Pravda ↗

SME was the only major outlet to frame the story around who was missing from the press conference. The event titled "People must have the power to give politicians power and take it away" was to be led by the party chair and interior minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok, but he did not appear before journalists. Raši explained his absence by budget negotiations. It took place shortly after the Nadácia Zastavme korupciu published a finding according to which the economy ministry had appointed Marcela Martonová, the wife of an investigator who, according to the foundation, repeatedly rejected a criminal complaint related to Šutaj Eštok and his trip to the Formula 1 race in Abu Dhabi, to head the supervisory board of Energetika Slovensko. Hlas group chair Robert Puci said he had only just learned about the matter and that the party would first "find out where the truth is". SME ↗ HN ↗

The party dimension is also underlined by the fact that NMS measured Hlas at 5.9 percent support this month, long below ten percent. Aktuality.sk ↗

Nuclear: the state wants all of JESS, another firm will assess the price

On Saturday, we wrote that Fico had moved the purchase of ČEZ's stake from the economy ministry to his Government Office. On Monday, two concrete parameters were added. The government states that it wants JESS brought into full state ownership, and Fico announced that the set share price will undergo an independent assessment by another consultancy firm. At the same time, he insists that he really is taking the agenda away from Economy Minister Denisa Saková. Aktuality.sk ↗ SME ↗ Trend ↗

Also read: Fico takes over the nuclear project. Brussels gave Slovakia a week to complete the documents

Last day for candidate lists and one wedding speech

On Monday, the deadline for filing candidate lists for the October combined regional elections expired. On that occasion, Speaker Raši expressed the wish that the campaign be a competition of ideas, not attacks. Denník N noticed that political billboards have started featuring QR codes that are meant to reveal how much the campaign cost and who is paying for it. SITA ↗ Denník N ↗

The regrouping around regional seats continues even after we wrote last week about SNS talks with Republika. Košice region candidate Igor Šimko announced support from the governing SNS, the Party of the Countryside, and the parties of Peter Pčolinský and Zoroslav Kollár, while in Martin Ján Danko is once again running for mayor. SITA ↗ Aktuality.sk ↗

Meanwhile, the coalition is failing to close its own dispute. SNS is publicly attacking environment minister Tomáš Taraba through his neighbor and ministry lawyer, the minister is countering with names linked to SNS, and agriculture minister Richard Takáč believes Andrej Danko and Taraba may still find their way back to each other. Postoj ↗ SITA ↗

The biggest space in the comment sections over the weekend, however, went to a wedding speech. SaS founder Richard Sulík described Daniel Bombic, Marek Šoun, and MEP Erik Kaliňák as "completely fine people" at his son's wedding. In March, the Specialized Criminal Court found Bombic guilty of extremism in a non-final ruling. Denník N ↗ Former colleagues distanced themselves from the remark, Jana Bittó Cigániková, with whom Sulík plans to continue his political work, also expressed disagreement, and SME and Aktuality.sk turned it into a question of where Sulík is actually heading. Coincidentally, Alojz Hlina joined SaS as a regular member on the same day. Pravda ↗ SME ↗ ta3 ↗

Under the radar

Aktuality.sk went through the scoring of the grant programme Restore Our House, run by Martina Šimkovičová's culture ministry, and described a pattern that it labeled as bypassing the ministry's own evaluation. Out of 412 applications, the ministry supported 91 and distributed almost three million euros, while requests totaled 43 million. The median score of supported projects is 62.5 points, rejected ones 43, so the system respects the scoring in most cases. Yet not a single project rated above 76 points received even one euro. The highest-rated project in the entire call, the structural stabilization of the perimeter wall by the church in Rimavská Baňa with 90 points, asked for 80,000 euros and got nothing. By contrast, the town of Martin received 95,000 euros for reconstructing the staircase in front of the Slovak National Museum despite a score of 14 out of 100, even though 220 rejected applications had higher scores. The source does not mention the ministry's response, but says that for 70 applications the ministry did not publish the scoring, although the law requires it to do so. Aktuality.sk ↗

The police trade union contacted twelve party leaders from Fico through Šimečka to Gubík and is asking them, before next year's parliamentary elections, for concrete plans for the police force, especially regarding staff stabilization, career progression, and a special system of social and pension security. Union chair Peter Jakubík justified this in part by recent remarks by politicians about police pensions. Aktuality.sk ↗ TASR ↗

Two data pieces from Monday describe the same problem from opposite sides. According to the Worldviews Survey, conducted in Slovakia by Go4insight on a sample of one thousand respondents, eight out of ten people aged 18 to 24 admit they would consider emigrating, while Slovakia is roughly at the global average. On the same day, Denník N showed the other side, namely that the domestic labor market is being rejuvenated by incoming foreigners, most of whom are between 30 and 44, while half of Slovaks are over 45. Pravda ↗ Denník N ↗

What hotinfo is watching

Illustrative photo: The Summer Archbishop's Palace in Bratislava, seat of the Slovak Government Office. Author Mosbatho, license CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.