Foreign Policies

Lajcak: Donald Trump Is President of Discontinuity

Bratislava, November 9 (TASR) – US voters have decided which person they want to see at the head of their country, and we respect this decision, said Slovak Foreign and European Affairs Minister Miroslav Lajcak on Wednesday in view of Donald Trump’s triumph in the presidential election.

“We congratulate the winner, and we’re ready to work with him. The issue that currently interests us the most is what the difference will be between Trump as candidate and Trump as president. Visions and promises are one thing; the practical barriers that every statesman is bound by are another,” noted Lajcak.

Lajcak didn’t want to go into speculation, but he thinks that there’s no need to dramatise or blow up what has been heard during the campaign because it’s normal for campaigns to feature elements that aren’t subsequently part of real politics.

“One thing that is beyond doubt and which has been confirmed by this election is that the feeling of frustration and discontent among voters is ever increasing in democratic countries and societies,” warned Lajcak, adding that this fact mustn’t be ignored.

“President-elect Trump isn’t a president of continuity in US domestic and foreign policies. The question is how big the discontinuity will be, or, rather, where he will find a place between the campaign and reality. People have great expectations from him based on what he was saying during the campaign, and the world, [the USA’s] partners, including Europe, also have some expectations. He will have to address this himself, but he isn’t a president of continuity but one of discontinuity,” emphasised Lajcak.

With respect to relations with NATO, Lajcak said that Trump will be looking at this via his entrepreneurial prism – that is, he’ll want to know what others are ready to do in order to preserve this relationship. “It would be naive for us to think that we could freeload from the USA,” added Lajcak.

Republican Donald Trump has become the 45th president of the United States of America by beating his opponent – Democrat Hillary Clinton. He’s set to replace the incumbent Barack Obama on January 20, 2017.

SPPK: If Farmers Aren't Taken Seriously, They Will Be Seen in Streets More Often

If farmers' demands are not taken seriously, they will be seen in the streets more often, Slovak Agriculture and Food Chamber chairman Emil Macho told a news conference held in front of the Parliament's building on Thursday.

PM: Slovakia to Organise Repeated Mass Testing, Two Dozen Districts Exempt

Bratislava, November 2 (TASR) – Slovakia will organise a repeated mass testing for the coronavirus, but districts with positivity rates below 0.7 percent in the testing this past weekend will be exempt from the second round, Prime Minister Igor Matovic (OLaNO) announced after a meeting of the Central Crisis Management

Fico: Slovakia to Receive €1 bn of €10-bn Package of EU Funds for Floods

Slovakia will receive €1 billion of the €10-billion package from EU cohesion funds to deal with the consequences of the recent floods, Premier Robert Fico, who attended on Thursday a meeting of premiers and the European Commission on floods in Wroclaw, Poland, told a press conference on Friday.

Read next