On 30 October 2024, the Slovak government approved a legislative proposal from SNS party members, including leader Andrej Danko, expanding “right to correction” laws across print and digital news media.
This law introduces severe penalties for journalists, imposing fines ranging from €1,000 to €15,000 for failure to publish corrections and granting politicians the power to demand corrections without proving falsehoods in published articles.
Critics argue the legislation enables government-backed harassment of journalists and undermines press freedom. Pavol Szalai, head of the EU and Balkans office at Reporters Without Borders, warned that this measure could be wielded to bully the press, urging the Slovak Parliament to reject the proposal in its second reading. Similarly, Marína Urbániková, a media freedom expert from Masaryk University, suggested the proposal aims to obstruct media operations, calling it “another step to complicate the lives and work of journalists.”
The law would permit political figures to request corrections based on “subjective feelings” of harm without evidentiary support, contradicting the Council of Europe’s guidelines on media corrections, which emphasise an objective harm threshold. Barbora Bukovská, legal director at ARTICLE 19, highlighted this concern, adding that public institutions would also gain correction rights—a move the Council of Europe identifies as vulnerable to abuse.
Slovakia’s upcoming amendments stand in potential conflict with the EU Media Freedom Act, set to come into force in 2025, which prohibits punitive measures against journalists protecting their sources. As Bukovská observed, this conflict could lead to legal clashes over media independence and press rights within EU frameworks in the coming year.
Source: Barbara Zmušková | EURACTIV.sk
