Successful combat against extremism in 2017

The fight against the rise of extremism also marked 2017 in Slovakia, with the state adopting a number of measures in an effort for more comprehensive repression. A so-called anti-extremist penal code amendment has been in effect since the beginning of the year, aimed at enabling more effective investigations into such criminal activities. A number of crimes were reclassified, with the prosecution of extremism now falling under the exclusive purview of the Specialised Criminal Court and the Special Prosecutor's Office, the staffing of which was reinforced by another five prosecutors. A specialised unit has been created within the National Criminal Agency to deal with extremism and experts in this field are being sought and trained. According to Justice Minister Lucia Žitňanská (Most-Híd), criminal prosecutions over acts of extremism had a decreasing tendency from 112 cases in 2012 gradually to 20 cases in 2016, yet the amount of prosecutions spiked to 130 within the first nine months of 2017.