The Minister of Agriculture, Gabriela Matečná, facing a no-confidence vote was the only point of an extraordinary meeting of the parliament held on Thursday. The negotiations were initiated by 3 opposition parties Freedom and Solidarity (SaS), Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OL'aNO) and We are family (Sme rodina).They claim that Matečná introduced unfair practices into reallocating funds for Slovakia within the Common Agricultural Policy. At the same time, they are accusing her of introducing fraudulent practices as general manager of the Slovak Land Fund (SPF), stating that "there is undisputable evidence" for this. Last but not least, in their statement they claim that Matečná continues in unfair practices as a minister, and represents oligarchs rather than real farmers and threatens the future resources for Slovakia for regional development.
Parliamentary Vice-chair Lucia Ďuriš-Nicholsonová (Freedom and Solidarity-SaS) said during the press conference on Wednesday that the Slovak Land Fund in the past had decided that 200 hectares of land should be compensation for 5.7 hectares confiscated during the communist regime. The 200 hectares are located in the High Tatra Mountains, close to a mineral water spring and on the route of a future expressway. Most of the contracts were signed when the Slovak Land Fund was chaired by current Agriculture Minister Gabriela Matečná (a Slovak National Party/SNS), said Nicholsonová. The government does not agree with removing Matečná from her office, and they perceive the act of the opposition members to be only fishing for political capital. According to the Cabinet, Matečná has been carrying out a number of specific system measures since 2016 in the agriculture, food, forestry and rural development sectors.
On Wednesday evening MEPs and representatives of the European Commission and the European Anti-fraud Office (OLAF) had the opportunity to listen to five representatives from the Slovak Farmers Initiative testified in the European Parliament about disputes with large landowners who earn money from agricultural subsidies and the impossibility to invoke the rights of the authorities. "We saw that the only remaining option was to try to address MEPs and present these cases in the European Parliament," the farmers explain. Therefore, they approached the head of the EP Committee on Budgetary Control, Ingeborg Grässle. They handed over several documents from the Slovak Supreme Court to her, and she promised to deal with this issue. The head of the Slovak delegation to the EPP in the European Parliament, Ivan Štefanec, pointed out that such situations are occurring despite the fact that many farmers have the title deeds of land, but they do not get to the land because the tenants are working on it and are receiving EU subsidies for this purpose. He added that the main goal of the meeting was to jointly seek solutions that would improve supervision over the use of EU funds in the farming sector and adherence to the rule of law at the European level.
President Andrej Kiska also commented on the situation in agriculture at the congress of the Slovak towns and villages association (ZMOS) held on Wednesday:"Gradually, it came to light that shady groups, even Mafia, had taken over agriculture. These groups take advantage of the chaos prevailing in the land ownership system." He added that "We need to restore law and order in the Slovak countryside."
We will keep you informed about the development at the parliamentary session.
