MORNING NEWS HIGHLIGHTS - Tuesday, 13 January 2026 - 9 a.m.

TASR brings a quick morning overview of the most important events seen in Slovakia on the previous day (Monday, 12 January): KOSICE - The trade union at the U.S. Steel Kosice steelworks declared a strike alert on Monday, TASR has learnt from Juraj Varga, head of the OZ KOVO trade union at U.S Steel Kosice. The reason is the failure to find agreement on the form of a new company collective agreement despite eight rounds of collective bargaining held between the company management and the trade union. The previous collective agreement at the steelworks was valid until 31 December 2025. Collective bargaining on the new one, which lasted eight rounds, resulted in the declaration of a dispute. The first round of bargaining was held on 14 October, and the most recent one on 16 December. "We're proceeding in line with the law on collective bargaining, with a strike alert being not a strike itself, but an expression of the employees' readiness to begin one if necessary," said Varga. The trade union reported that the first point at issue became the weekly working time, and specifically the employer’s enormous pressure to increase this. The employer proposed extending the weekly working time from the current 35.5 hours to 37.5 hours. According to the trade union, another problematic issue is the employer's unwillingness to increase tariff salaries for 2026, as well as a cut in the benefits included in the union's proposal. The unions identified three core pillars of their position: employment, working time and salaries. "Our goal in the collective bargaining is to maintain an acceptable standard of living for employees in key areas, without a further increase in weekly working hours. At the same time, we want to obtain salary increases, which directly affects the quality of life of our members and employees," stated Varga. BRATISLAVA - The opposition Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) has called on the government to come up with specific measures to regulate social networks, describing them as a "primary tumour" of mental health, KDH chairman Milan Majersky, MPs Jan Horecky and Peter Stachura, and MEP Miriam Lexmann (all from KDH) told a news conference on Monday. "We're calling on the government and the relevant ministries not to stop at merely stating what we have long known, but to come up with solutions," stated Horecky. According to KDH, the action plan for the National Concept for Child Protection in the Digital Environment has brought no signs of systemic measures to regulate social networks. "We're clear about this, and we know how to do it so that we'll raise a resilient generation from our children — not children who are manipulated, over whom the internet, algorithms and social networks hold sway," said Horecky. Majersky pointed to statistics showing that 46 percent of children aged between 13 and 17 constantly spend time on social networks, while a quarter of children show signs of addiction to social media, and pressure from social networks is identified as one of the biggest causes of mental health problems among children and adolescents. In this context, Stachura drew attention to recently published statistics concerning suicide attempts. "Over the course of six years, from 2019 to 2024, more than 1,500 suicide attempts were recorded among children and adolescents aged under 18," he said, pointing to mental health problems caused by social networks. BRATISLAVA - The coalition Slovak National Party (SNS) wants to push through an amendment to the Criminal Code and, as part of this, it proposes adjustments to penalty ranges for extremist criminal offences. For several of them, SNS wants to lower the upper limits of sentences, arguing that penalties need to be set in a more rational and differentiated way. A group of SNS MPs has submitted the amendment with the proposed changes to Parliament. "The aim of the proposed amendment is to align criminal law repression with the basic principles of modern criminal law, in particular the principle of proportional punishment, individualised criminal liability, legal certainty and the ultima ratio principle. The affected provisions have long shown problems in application arising from disproportionately strict penalty ranges, legally vague terms and excessive fragmentation of offence definitions. The current setting of sanction frameworks in some cases leads to the mechanical imposition of unconditional prison sentences even in situations in which there is no direct harm to protected interests and in which the seriousness of the act lies primarily at the level of abstract endangerment," the submitters argued. For several offences, they therefore proposed reducing the upper limits of penalty ranges. This concerns, for example, the offence of founding, supporting and promoting a movement aimed at suppressing fundamental rights and freedoms. Under the proposal, the perpetrator of this offence should be punished "by up to two years", instead of one to five years as at present. BRATISLAVA - The government is considering exempting towns and municipalities from complicated public procurement rules for municipal and city rental housing, and wants to enable them selecting construction contractors through a simplified procedure based on three bids only, Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD) said on Monday, adding that this will require changes to public procurement rules. Fico announced this after a meeting between government representatives and officials of the Association of Slovak Towns and Villages (ZMOS) on rental housing. According to the prime minister, €37 million must be found in 2026 for non-refundable subsidies from the Ministry of Transport, which cover 40 percent of the costs of acquiring rental housing. No funds have been allocated for this purpose in this year's budget. "The construction of rental housing through the State Housing Development Fund has been sacrificed in the name of the consolidation of public finances, as reflected in the budgets for 2025 and 2026. Towns and municipalities can take out loans through this fund at one percent interest or, in some cases, with zero interest, covering up to 60 percent of the costs of building a planned municipal or city apartment block," Fico said. The remaining 40 percent of costs used to be covered by a non-refundable contribution provided to towns and municipalities through the Transport Ministry, but that has been taken away by the necessary consolidation, added Fico. "For 2026, no resources were found for this non-refundable contribution, which resulted in an absolute slowdown of rental housing construction through the State Housing Development Fund," the prime minister warned. BRATISLAVA - The Supreme Court overturned on Monday a previous ruling of the Bratislava Regional Court issued in favour of the state-owned SPP gas utility in the case of the so-called Ducky's promissory notes, TASR learnt on the same day. The gas company will therefore have to honour the promissory notes in favour of the Cypriot company Stroden Management Limited. SPP announced that it will file an extraordinary appeal against the ruling. Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court decided to uphold in full the promissory-notes payment order of the Bratislava Regional Court, dated from 17 May 1999, with Stroden having a full claim against SPP for reimbursement of legal costs. The amount involved is 350 million Czech crowns (€14.41 million). "SPP does not agree with the scandalous decision of the Supreme Court in the matter of the so-called Ducky's promissory notes, which overturned the previous ruling of the Bratislava Regional Court issued in favour of SPP. The company will continue to protect its rights and interests before the relevant courts and state authorities. Immediately after receiving the written version of the decision, SPP will file an extraordinary appeal," the gas utility said. According to SPP, neither the company's assets nor those of the Slovak Republic are in danger. At the same time, SPP stated that in this case the appeal has an automatic suspensive effect, meaning that the Cypriot letterbox company Stroden Management Limited cannot seize the SPP assets through distraint proceedings. BRATISLAVA - The opposition Progressive Slovakia (PS) party rejects a draft amendment to the Criminal Code submitted by a group of MPs from the junior coalition Slovak National Party (SNS), fearing that the state's ability to protect society from extremism and hate speech will be undermined, inter alia, as a result of lowered upper limits on sentences for extremist crimes. In a statement provided by the PS media department on Monday, the party described this as an attempt to legalise extremism in Slovakia. "First, they dismantled special units for combating organised crime in order to rescue themselves and their oligarchs. They crippled the institution of cooperating defendant and lowered sentences for criminals. And, as if that weren't enough, they are now lending a helping hand to neo-Nazis and other extremists," said PS MP and former Police Corps president Jaroslav Spisiak. He also views this as an attempt to win voters among extremists. In addition to lowered maximum sentences for several extremism crimes, certain elements of crime will also be deleted from the law, said PS. "If the law is passed, anything having to with the possession and dissemination of extremist materials isn't going to be a crime any more," said PS MP Irena Bihariova. PS declared that it will do everything it can to prevent the changes, and its MP Lucia Plavakova (PS) also called on coalition lawmakers not to support the amendment. "This is a road straight to hell," she told a press conference on Monday. jrg