dear colleagues and friends dear president biden thank you for launching this important initiative
slovakia has embarked on a path of democracy and freedom only three decades ago we soon
understood that the democratic rules we adopted and institutions were built elected the resilience
of those in long-established democracies they sometimes proved too weak to resist political
interference or corrupt interests this has forced us to adapt and innovate them so they could
become truly resilient one example is that of our judiciary which has become a critical element in
our overall democratic transition in the 1990s we strengthened the judiciary independence but
not the accountability mechanism opening space for arbitraries and political or business interference
therefore we are now finishing finishing reforms to increase the judges accountability
while also improving their professional expertise and impartiality as in many other
transition countries our evolving democratic system could not always deal with corruption
having adopted transparency measures that have worked elsewhere
we added several innovative tools to combat high level corruption and money laundering
we create a special prosecutor's office and dedicated criminal court to deal with such cases
which some other countries also adopted since then we eliminated secrecy from public finance
transactions no entity can do substantial business with state unless it fully discloses
its beneficial ownership in a specialized and publicly accessible registry we plan to increase
the responsibility of gatekeepers such as auditors notaries or tax advisors in the process
while corruption remains an issue some of these tools have helped reduce graft in public finance
and close the gaps used to hide dirty money we want to share and exchange our experience
including through an international conference next year held together with the u.s partners
i could not conclude without mentioning the free and independent media which are
critical for any democracy they played a vital role in our own democratic struggle a young
slovak investigative journalist tian kuciak and his fiance were murdered three years ago
no journalist should face the risk for doing their job we will introduce laws improving journalists
personal security increase penalties for attacks on them and reinforce safeguards against their
abuse in defamation cases taking these steps at home we also want to support media freedom
in other countries we are contributing to the unesco global media fund and supporting the
organized crime and corruption reporting project as part of the global anti-corruption consortium
our support will also go to council of europe's work on protection of journalists
and the partnership on information and democracy we will double our foreign aids dedicated to media
and investigative journalism with an ambition to become a regional hub for such support
we must also address the ongoing hybrid threats and the role of social media platforms in
spreading lies and misinformation they undermined our society's ability to overcome the challenges
we are facing besides building dedicated centers to deal with hybrid fights at home
we need to come up with a democratic global framework to enforce social media platforms
responsibility and accountability dear all slovakia has had its democratic hesitations
painful as they may be they taught us that for democracy to survive it must be a constant
process of self-improvement let's strive for this together thank you
you