This Saturday on 30 March 2019, Slovakia will elect its new president. The front-runner is the pro-EU anti-corruption lawyer Zuzana Čaputová. With 41% of the vote in the first round, she was well ahead of the Smer-party-nominated EU Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič, who finished a distant second with 19%. Although the country’s real executive power lies with the prime minister, the outcome of the closely watched presidential election will reveal the changing shape of politics in Slovakia and a region mostly ruled by illiberal governments.
If elected, Čaputová will become the first female head of state in the Central European Visegrád Group (consisting of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) – and also the only unabashed liberal. In this event, our speakers will discuss how much Slovakia’s domestic politics has changed one year after the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and the resulting large-scale public protests. They will also discuss lessons learned, and whether Slovakia’s backlash to populism is an exception or a sign of a new trend emerging in Central and Eastern Europe.
Opening remarks:
Milan Nič
Senior Fellow at the Robert Bosch Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia
Dr. Kai-Olaf Lang
Senior Fellow, Research Division: EU/Europe, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP)
Chair:
Zsuzsanna Vegh
Research Fellow, European-University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder)
The discussion will be held in English.
