Democracy Digest: Study Finds Slovakia Has Europe’s Weakest Spy Agency

A new investigation by the French weekly L’Express ranked Slovakia’s Information Service (SIS) as the worst intelligence agency in Europe. The spy agency scored no points in the ranking, although Slovakia was not the only country to receive this score. The ranking is based on interviews with around 60 intelligence experts from 25 countries, including former heads of European intelligence agencies, the CIA and Mossad. Many of those interviewed said the SIS has been weakened by political influence, poor leadership and concerns about its links to Russia, the Slovak daily Dennik N noted. They believe this has damaged Slovakia’s reputation among its European allies. The report also focuses on SIS Director Pavol Gaspar. It says he had no previous experience in intelligence work before taking the job and raises questions about his qualifications and appointment. The article also mentions allegations of plagiarism and unexplained wealth, according to the daily. According to unnamed European intelligence officials, his appointment was seen as political and has raised doubts about whether the SIS can work independently. The report compares Slovakia with Europe’s strongest intelligence services. Britain’s MI6 came first because of its long-term planning, strong international contacts and success in gathering information. France’s DGSE and the Netherlands’ AIVD were also highly rated for their global operations, cyber skills and ability to collect valuable intelligence.The opposition party Progressive Slovakia (PS) claimed this week that new traffic cameras installed by the Interior Ministry appear to have been manufactured by the Russian company Simicon. The cameras are part of a government plan to crack down on speeding and other traffic offences by automatically recording drivers who break the rules. Peter Bator, a former Slovak ambassador to NATO and now a member of PS, said the cameras look almost identical to Simicon’s products. According to him, their shape, casing, connectors and camera lenses all match the Russian-made devices. He believes it is unlikely that they were produced by another company. PS says this could create a security risk because the cameras record vehicle registration numbers and images of drivers and passengers. The party argues that if the equipment is Russian, it could also be used to track the movements of government officials, foreign visitors or military convoys. The Interior Ministry denied the claims. It said the cameras are not made by a Russian company and work on a secure network that cannot be accessed by outside organisations. However, it did not say who made the cameras or publish the contract under which they were bought. The first cameras have already been installed on the D2 motorway near Bratislava and are currently being tested before they go into full operation.Former Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki speaks during a press conference at the Polish parliament building in Warsaw, Poland, 24 July 2026. EPA/RADEK PIETRUSZKA Morawiecki confirms party launch as PiS split deepens; Poland starts nuclear build as existing plants struggle Former Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki announced that he will launch a new political party by October 15, bringing the long-running power struggle inside Law and Justice (PiS) closer to a formal split. In a recent interview, Morawiecki said PiS leaders had pushed him and his allies out after 40 MPs joined the parliamentary club linked to his Rozwoj Plus association. “We fought for unity until the very end,” Morawiecki said, arguing that their membership had now effectively been declared “dead” by the party’s disciplinary spokesman. PiS had earlier demanded that its politicians renounce membership in organisations engaged in political activity, a move widely seen as targeting Morawiecki’s group. Although the party has not yet formally expelled all of them, Morawiecki said the situation was now clear. His new formation is expected to be unveiled at a Rozwoj Plus convention held on the anniversary of Poland’s 2023 parliamentary election, further fragmenting the country’s opposition right. A recent IBRiS poll conducted amid the split put Morawiecki’s Rozwoj Plus at 7.8 per cent – enough to comfortably enter parliament – while PiS plunged 7.2 points to 16.9 per cent, the lowest in a decade. Poland formally handed over the site of its first nuclear power plant to US contractor Bechtel this week, clearing the way for preparatory construction work in the Choczewo district on the Baltic coast. Polish firm Budimex will begin levelling the ground, expanding drainage systems and building 16 kilometres of temporary roads across the more than 300-hectare site. The work is scheduled to continue until early 2029. “This is the largest investment in the Polish economy in modern Polish history,” Energy Minister Milosz Motyka said at Wednesday’s ceremony. He argued the project would provide cheaper and more secure electricity, strengthen Poland’s energy sovereignty and create a new domestic supply chain. State-owned Polskie Elektrownie Jadrowe says it has signed contracts worth more than 1.2 billion zlotys with roughly 475 Polish companies. Meanwhile, as Poland began preparing the ground for a long-promised nuclear future, extreme summer conditions are already restricting parts of the system it is intended to replace. Several generating units at the coal-fired Kozienice and Polaniec plants were out of operation on Tuesday as heat and low water levels in the Vistula complicated cooling and other technical processes. Czech CCTV footage shows at top left moment of crash between MP Filip Turek’s car with an ambulance. Screenshot: X / @ZdenekHrib Police investigate Czech MP over car crash; countdown to municipal elections; Havel human rights award to be preserved Czech police this week launched an investigation into MP and government commissioner for the Green Deal Filip Turek on suspicion of bodily harm through negligence over a car crash last month, which saw the honorary president of the Motorist Party – a ruling coalition junior partner – collide with an ambulance at a busy thoroughfare in Prague’s city centre. Caught on CCTV, the traffic accident led to the ambulance’s driver being injured and incapacitated for several days, sparking calls from opposition parties as well as President Petr Pavel for Turek to step down from both his parliamentary and government positions – although experts remain divided on who precisely was to blame for the collision. Turek has since temporarily vacated his position as the government’s plenipotentiary for climate change and the Green Deal pending the results of the investigation and vowed not to use his parliamentary immunity should the police file criminal charges against him. “I think the investigation will go well for me because I kind of know the regulations,” he told TV Nova, also suggesting the injured ambulance driver was “talked into” staying under hospital care longer than necessary for the optics. This week was the deadline for political parties, movements and coalitions to officially register for the upcoming municipal elections, scheduled to be held across Czechia on October 9-10. Candidacies will now be reviewed by state electoral authorities by August 22. In the capital Prague, two dozen political groupings will take part in the race to win the big and hotly contested prize, a couple more than four years ago, on top of electoral fights for the city’s 57 local districts. In addition to electing their political representatives in the Czech Republic’s more than 6,000 towns, cities and municipalities, voters will also vote for a third of the Senate’s seats. About 155 candidates have registered to run for this year’s partial Senate race, less than the last ballot, mainly a result of pre-election agreements and joint candidates put forward by opposition parties. Dagmar Havlova, the widow of the former dissident and president, along with the Vize 97 foundation confirmed this week that the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize will be preserved and continue to be awarded every year. This follows a previous announcement by the Vaclav Havel Library – which has faced an exodus of staff, sponsors and funding in recent months – that it would no longer participate in the annual award ceremony after Havlova withdrew her consent for the NGO to use the former playwright’s name. Coming with a cheque of 60,000 euros, the award was established shortly after Havel’s death in 2011 to recognise outstanding achievements in the field of human rights and has been awarded by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe since 2013 together with the Vaclav Havel Library and the Charter 77 Foundation. Past laureates include Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, Russian journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza and Belarusian activist Maria Kalesnikava. A general view shows the Kunigunda Street headquarters of the Media Services and Support Trust Fund (MTVA) in Budapest, Hungary, 15 June 2026. EPA/Szilard Koszticsak Staff at Hungary state media kept record of news manipulation; new president to be elected next week A diligent group of journalists at the state news agency MTI secretly spent years collecting information detailing how news reports were manipulated by Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party and its allies during his 16 years in power, the new regime running Hungary’s public service media, MTVA, said in a statement this week. According to Telex.hu, these reporters and news editors, who call themselves the Pro Domo working group, spent more than 10 years collecting correspondence, emails and chat messages proving how the news was manipulated, falsified and suppressed at MTI, which was contained in a 482-page document handed over to MTVA’s new leadership. The working group divided the cases into several categories: stories that were suppressed or written under orders; stories that were discarded; manipulated materials; censored and falsified news stories. MTVA released a 15-page excerpt that is a selection of typical examples from the material. According to Telex.hu, instances include an MTI reporter writing a story in 2022 about a Russian troll farm being exposed by the British government, but couldn’t find the article afterwards, so a colleague approached one of the editors to ask what had happened to it. The response was: “It’s been discarded”. There were also blacklists: citing the German newspaper Die Welt was forbidden as were international NGOs Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. “Accurate, balanced, and impartial reporting is a fundamental requirement of Hungarian media regulation, the Public Service Code, and of European regulations protecting media freedom. The new leadership of the public media is releasing these documents as part of the ongoing review, in order to strengthen transparency and restore the public’s trust, so that such propagandistic practices cannot be repeated in the future,” MTVA said in a statement. Meanwhile, the parliamentary group of Hungary’s governing Tisza party proposed on Wednesday that parliament should elect the country’s new president on August 11. The resignation of Hungary’s previous president, Tamas Sulyok, an appointee of the previous government, was a key campaign pledge of the new prime minister, Peter Magyar, whose Tisza won a landslide victory at the April 12 general election. Magyar initially tried to get the world’s greatest female chess player of all time, Judit Polgar, to accept the nomination to be the country’s next president, but she declined the offer. Any Hungarian over the age of 35 with voting rights can become president, but Magyar has said his chosen candidate – given Tisza’s huge majority in parliament the de facto winner – must be independent of political parties. Circulated names include the former justice minister Peter Barandy, the anti-corruption campaigner and former MP Akos Hadhazy, Methodist pastor Gabor Ivanyi, economist Peter Rona and former judge Adrienn Laczo. Magyar has also been photographed recently with Botond Fulop, the lawyer who uncovered the pardon scandal that ended president Katalin Novak’s political career, and historian Ignac Romsics. Another name being floated is Peter Marki-Zay, the leader of the opposition in the 2022 general election who lost in a landslide to Orban. Popular choices on social media, where much of the speculation has played out, include reality TV stars, bodybuilders, the Victoria’s Secret model Barbara Palvin, and Erno Rubik, inventor of the Rubik’s cube. But the most popular candidate in one anonymous poll, the Guardian reported, was Andras Arato, a retired electrical engineer who found global online fame as a meme: Hide the Pain Harold.