MORNING NEWS HIGHLIGHTS - Saturday, December 28, 2024 - 9 a.m.

TASR brings a quick morning overview of the most important events seen in Slovakia on the previous day (Friday, December 27): BRATISLAVA - Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD) has offered Slovakia as a suitable country for hosting peace talks on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Fico said this in a video on a social network, adding that he had already discussed the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin and welcomes Putin's positive response. "If anyone turns to us with an interest in organising any peace talks in Slovakia regarding the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, they can count on our hospitability," claimed Fico, who believes that Slovakia is a small but extraordinarily active country in international relations. In Fico's view, it is incomprehensible that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejects a truce. According to the Slovak Prime Minister, Zelenskyy is dragging the whole of Ukraine into catastrophe. "The negotiating position of Ukraine is becoming increasingly worse with each passing day and Ukraine will pay for this Western adventure an enormous price in the form of loss of land and the presence of foreign militaries," claimed Fico, calling for truce and the launch of peace talks. The Prime Minister also announced that in January he's slated to visit Turkey and in February meet the Pope in the Vatican. Fico added that he plans to discuss the ending of the military conflict in Ukraine with the Holy Father too. BRATISLAVA - This year has revealed the lack of preparedness on the part of Voice-SD to assume responsibility over the Interior Ministry, as the ministry has fully adjusted to promoting the agenda of Smer-SD in other government portfolios at its own expense, ex-justice minister and opposition's KDH vice-chair Viliam Karas told TASR in an interview. "The amended Penal Code reclassified an enormous volume of illegal misdeeds and petty theft as misdemeanors, yet the ministry has in no way prepared for penalizing this increased amount of misdemeanors, has failed to prepare the Police Corps for such a change, either in terms of personnel or methodology, all of which means that in practice there's no one to attend to petty property crimes," thinks Karas. Another failure of the current Interior Ministry leadership is its inability to address the shortage of police officers, whereas the scrapping of the National Criminal Agency (NAKA) and the reassignment of its officers to other departments that lack the necessary experience directly eroded the capability of the state to investigate sophisticated criminal activities. Karas added that such actions have an adverse impact on police officers' mental health, which leads to police brutality. "A special chapter covers the disadvantageous procurements by the ministry, whether we talk cars or firefighting equipment, which raise questions and invite suspicions," he said. BRATISLAVA - The Justice Ministry managed to meet all targets and goals it set out for 2024, particularly the passing of new Penal Code and making changes to the penal state policy, which was also one of the fundamental items in the Government Manifesto, Justice Minister Boris Susko told TASR in an interview. "In my view, the amendment to the Penal Code fulfilled the purpose we pursued and that is to fundamentally change the state penal policy from repressive to restorative, so that the main purpose is not just the punishment for the punishment's sake, but rather to reeducate perpetrators, so that they can be reintegrated back into society after some time," explained the minister. The second goal was to introduce higher level of variance in the sentencing, to take into account first and foremost whether perpetrators of economic crimes paid for damages their crime caused. Susko rejected media reports of the mass release of hundreds of convicts from jail, whose sentences no longer hold after the Penal Code changes. However, the minister still sees room for improvement in the application practice. To that end, a platform was formed to have individual regional court judges and representatives of the Supreme Court discuss incongruences and unite different judge opinions on the application of the new rules. Another success in Susko's view was the amendment to the Civil Code in terms of helping consumers with their consumer contracts and the provision of legal aid to people in material need. BRATISLAVA - Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok (Voice-SD) plans to submit to the government changes in the state crisis management, as works on a study, in which the new legislation is going to be anchored, have reached the final stage already. "We're certainly going to hold talks with the Defence Ministry on gradually reconstructing the entire system of civilian war shelters in Slovakia," Sutaj Estok told TASR in an interview. "Simply put, as long as nothing happens, everyone waves their hand at this, but today we live in a different security environment than we used to five years ago and that's precisely why that infrastructure, that's been neglected for years calls for investments today." According to the minister, the state failed during the pandemic, energy and migration crises, and it's necessary to revise the entire crisis management system. Sutaj Estok underlined, however, that the state handled this year's floods well. New rules on crisis management are supposed to minimise red tape during crisis situations, with the ministry expecting them to become the subject of a broad public discourse as well. mf