Slovakia

Korčok, a nominee of the coalition party SaS, who has backed the DCA from the outset alongside Defence Minister Jaroslav Naď of OĽaNO, said the pact showed the current government is serious about the country's security and defence policy.

Renovation of Rakoczi's chateau in Borsa was officially finished in June 2021 at a ceremony attended by Slovak President Zuzana Caputova and her Hungarian counterpart Janos Ader. Photo: Tomas Hrivnak Sign listing the politicians responsible for the restoration of Rakoczi chateau in Borsa, Slovakia.

"The evaluation of the previous regime as better is the result of a comparison with the present, which can be a source of dissatisfaction for some, so much so that they come to believe life was better under the previous regime," said Bohumil Búzik, a sociologist at the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

Nurturing 'pub talk'

The popularity of Robert Fico, the former prime minister and chair of the social democratic Smer party who is currently an opposition MP, has received a boost lately. While only 19 per cent of voters trusted him in November 2020, that figure had risen to 29 per cent by September, according to a poll by Focus.

The agreement was signed by Tourism Minister Sofia Zacharaki and the State Secretary of Tourism of Slovakia Katarína Bruncková

Pope Francis gets off a plane upon arrival at Bratislava International Aiport. He was welcomed with a traditional tasting of bread and salt on the tarmac of the airport, and received a bouquet of flowers typical for Slovakia. Traffic in the country's capital was paralysed for several hours on the day given extraordinary safety measures.

Ever since Pčolinský was detained, Sme Rodina has publicly declared that the charges against him are unlawful, suggesting they were being pressed as revenge within the bigger picture of tensions between and within law enforcement institutions in Slovakia.

"What [Slovaks] did towards Hungarians living in Slovakia in 1945-1947 was a sin before God and before the people," Kover said at the unveiling of the memorial, according to the Dennik N daily. He warned that if these events were ever forgotten, "they could happen again in the future" to "defenceless victims".

Now it seems that Orban and Ader will, after all, have a 45-minute audience with Pope Francis, who will leave the same day to start his three-day visit to Slovakia.

Factor in swelling doubts over the independence of the public broadcaster and the influence of oligarchic owners with stakes in private media outlets, and Slovakia's fall down the ranking becomes less shocking.