On Monday, Slovak sceintists and diplomats expressed their concern and disagreements with recent steps and statements of Slovak Finance Minister Igor Matovič.
The Government's expert advisory team stated that it is uneasy about "denigrating statements" thus reacting to Finance Minister Igor Matovič's negative comments about particular Slovak scientific institutions. "The denigrating statements break the boundaries of tolerance widely accepted as the norm of behaviour in decent society," wrote the advisory team without addressing any specific person.
Last week, Matovič made comments suggesting that the State Institute for the Supervision of Medicines (ŠÚKL) and the Biomedicine Centre of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV), which tested the Russian Sputnik V vaccine in an allegedly unregistered lab, angered the Russians, who then decided that Slovakia should return the vaccine purchased six weeks earlier. ŠÚKL said that it had not been notified that testing the vaccine would violate the contract, which is still classified.
A group of Slovak diplomats ciritcized Matovič for his visit to Hungary where he discussed cooperation in assessing of the Sputnik V vaccine with Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán. At the meeting, Matovič was not accompanied by a representative of Slovak diplomacy however, MP of Matovič's Ordinary People party György Gyimesi.
"Foreign service is a strategic tool for enforcing and protecting the interests of the state and strengthening its position international position," wrote the diplomats in their statements. According to them it is unprecedented to question the independent and professional institutions of its own state, attack its own foreign service, ignore written and unwritten rules in the exercise of a constitutional function so many times, in such a short time and with such intensity. "In addition, doing so in the capital and in the presence of the country's leader, who is heavily criticized for serious deficits in the rule of law, is an insult not only to Slovak diplomacy, but to humiliate Slovakia and jeopardize its state interests in the worst way," stated the diplomats. The joint statement was signed by Slovak ambassadors Iveta Hricová, Radovan Javorčík, Rastislav Káčer, Andrea Elscheková Matisová, Peter Mišík, Michal Mlynár, Igor Slobodník a Miroslav Wlachovský.
