Slovakia’s parliament approved a cabinet-backed law targetting non-governmental organisations in the first reading on April 30.

If approved, the controversial law would label NGOs which receive more than €5,000 from outside of Slovakia as “organisations with foreign support”. The Ministry of Interior could also dissolve NGOs that make mistakes in their annual reports.

“The aim of the proposal is to increase the transparency of the financing of non-governmental non-profit organisations,” the rationale for the legislation reads.  

The law was filed by the far-right SNS party, which, together with the leftist Smer party of populist Prime Minister Robert Fico and the centre-left Hlas of president-elect Peter Pellegrini, holds a narrow majority in the parliament.

The controversial legislation has caused an outcry among the opposition, NGOs as well as liberal media, which described it as a continuation of Fico’s self-declared “war” on NGOs.

Fico “views the civic sector as some kind of competition in the struggle for power, which, of course, is not the way it is,” Grigorij Meseznikov, head of the Slovak Institute for Public Questions,  said in an interview for Czech Radio.  

Meseznikov added that Fico also blames NGOs for mass demonstrations sparked by the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancé in 2018, which forced him to step down from power then.

After several years in opposition, Fico made an astonishing comeback after adopting Kremlin-pleasing talking points and hardened nationalist rhetoric mixed with hoaxes and allegations that Slovak traditions are under threat.

Czech Radio described the legislation as stricter than the similar legislation in Hungary, which was ruled as incompatible with European legislation, but not as strict as the Russian foreign agent law, which is also aimed at media, and the legislation in Georgia, where public rallies are currently being held against the legislation.