The Government should engage in closer co-operation with farmers, address their problems, farmers should collaborate more among themselves and an independent arbiter should be instituted in Slovakia to resolve land disputes. These are the recommendations of the inspection of European Parliament's Committee on Budgetary Control, which was carried out in Slovakia this week. They looked into serious allegations of the misuse of EU agricultural subsidies, which the murdered journalist Ján Kuciak highlighted shortly before his death at the end of February 2018.
In May this year, the Agriculture Minister Gabriela Matečná faced a no confidence vote after the scandal came to light. At the time, ruling coalition partners saw no reason for her to leave and she remained in post.
In June, Slovak farmers held a protest drive on tractors from the eastern Slovak town of Michalovce across the entire country to the capital, Bratislava. The claimed to have been pursued by "stronger interest groups" that cultivate the land of foreign owners, receiving subsidies for asphalted areas and were protected by people from political circles. They allegedly faced intimidation, blackmail and violence as well as the machinations of a legal mafia against which the local and state authorities are "inactive".
On Wednesday, the Slovak MEP of the non -parliamentary Christian Democratic Party Ivan Štefanec again called on Agriculture Minister Gabriela Matečná to step down. "During talks with farmers in eastern Slovakia, it has come to light that she has ignored for years extensive fraud with agricultural subsidies and the dislodging of farmers from their own land. This causes damage not only to the aggrieved individuals, but also to the entire Slovak agriculture and food industry," he stressed.
The Agriculture Minister reacted to the recommendations of the European Parliament Committee on Budgetary Control by saying that she has been calling on farmers for several years to unite and speak with one voice.
