Slovakia: PM Fico Files Criminal Complaint Against Judge Pamela Zaleska
On April 29, 2026, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico publicly confirmed that he has filed a criminal complaint against Judge Pamela Zaleska of the Specialized Criminal Court over her handling of the conviction of former special prosecutor Dušan Kováčik. The Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic publicly objected to the Prime Minister’s stated justification for the complaint, calling the move an inappropriate attempt by the executive to intimidate sitting judges. The episode is the latest in a series of moves by Fico’s government against the country’s anticorruption infrastructure, following the 2024 dissolution of the Office of the Special Prosecutor, and is being widely read as an effort to use criminal process to pressure individual judges into deference.