The Czech government, headed by Prime Minister Petr Fiala (ODS), has postponed negotiations with the Slovak government indefinitely, claiming that they have different views on foreign policy. Prime Minister Fiala was supported by Deputy Prime Minister Ivan Bartoš (Pirates) and Czech President Petr Pavel. The Slovak government, with Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer), commented that the Czech government is always welcome and that this cannot disturb our mutual relations, which are tested by history. Slovak MEP Miroslav Radačovský, chairman of the political party SLOVAK PATRIOT, who is famous for saying that the European Union should stop the madness or suffocate itself with Slavic blood. He expressed himself very precisely and clearly, and also revealed what else was behind this unfortunate act of the Czech Government.
How would you comment on the act of Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, who refused to negotiate with the Slovak government, please? The current attitude of the Czech Prime Minister and his refusal to meet with the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic has provoked a rather unhappy reaction from the Slovak side, for the reason that the Slovaks still are and will continue to consider themselves brothers of the Czechs. This refusal hurt the Slovaks because of the Czech Prime Minister's behaviour.
And how do ordinary people in Slovakia perceive this? Slovaks do not see this as politics as such, like Fico versus Fiala, but they see it as a relationship between Czechs and Slovaks. This is the social dimension, that you know that you have the closest brother with whom you made history and the Czechoslovak Republic was formed, you also fought together and laid down your lives in the uprising, foreign resistance, and our Slovak Gabcik liquidated the protector of the Czechs Reinhard Heydrich - and suddenly this attitude? This is a social attitude, but it does not mean that relations between Czechs and Slovaks will be bad.
And what about the political perception of this diplomatic path chosen by our Prime Minister Fiala? As far as the political stance is concerned, it is one thing that the Czech Prime Minister sovereignly decided, and was supported by the President, not to receive the legitimately elected Prime Minister of Slovakia, so that is one side of the story, but the other side of the story is that the next day he received the leader of the strongest opposition party, Progresivní Slovensko, Michal Šimečka. This is no longer a correct approach in politics. Nobody knows exactly what Prime Minister Fiala was trying to say, but we can think that he was trying to say that he does not respect the legitimately elected government in Slovakia, that he refused to accept it and to negotiate with it, but that he respects the opposition, which has a different vision of the world and of politics. This is already an act that could be called, in an exaggerated way, an act of a kind of hostility towards the Slovak Republic.
Do you think Slovakia could react similarly in the future? No, that's another thing, that the Slovak government and Slovakia in general would never reproach the Czech Prime Minister and the Czech President if they were doing sovereign foreign policy and if they met with any foreign partner, we would say that it's an internal matter of the Czech Republic. It is curious why Prime Minister Fiala and the President are sorry that our Slovak Foreign Minister, the Minister of a sovereign state like Slovakia, met with the Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Sergei Lavrov. Quite simply, this was the main cause of this situation.
Do you see this as pressure from the Czech government and Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala? You know, I wonder. Why doesn't the Czech government freak out if US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Lavrov? Are we anything less than the US just because we are a nation of five million? No, we are a sovereign nation state and we have our national interests. Nobody objects to the national interests of Russia, of the United States. Simply put, our national interests are first and foremost our national interests. We are just not willing to live in a protectorate and the Czechs have protectorate experience. As I said, Gabchik helped liquidate your protectorate.
So what is the current foreign policy of the Slovak government? We don't want to live under a protectorate of bureaucrats from the European Union, we don't want to live under a protectorate of the United States, we don't want to live under a protectorate of Russia, we want to be a sovereign nation state within the European Union. We want to fulfil our duties, which are for the benefit of Slovakia, but no one can dictate to Slovakia its national interests. And it is in Slovakia's national interest, and we are not saying this in secret, but out loud, that there should be peace in Ukraine and that negotiations on the terms of peace should begin. That is our foreign policy. The policy of peace. And, above all, when we use the expression, and I am an expert in this, that we want to prevent Slavs from killing each other, for God's sake, what is wrong with that, why is the Czech Prime Minister angry? Is he not a Slav? And he has a Slavic history. You see, this is an unfortunate act by the Czech Government, which our Slovaks see as an unfortunate act by the Czechs, and we are unhappy about it, because we are not only the closest neighbours, but we are essentially a brotherly nation. So that is the situation.
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