NEWS

On October 2, 2022, FOS held a webinar on Jozef Tiso’s Leadership of the Slovak State During World War II and the “Jewish Question.” The featured speaker was Madeline Vadkerty, program coordinator at the Holocaust Documentation Center in Bratislava.  J. Luke Ryder, historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, moderated the webinar.  Before moving to Bratislava, […]

Ivan Korčok, recently the Slovak Ambassador to the U.S., has been appointed Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic in the cabinet of the new Slovak government led by Prime Minister Igor Matovič. The February 29 parliamentary elections saw the rise of Matovič’s OLaNO party, which was able to form a new governing coalition with three other parties. In the course of selecting positions in the cabinet, the SAS party headed by Richard Sulík, chose Amb. Korčok as Foreign Minister, even though he is not a member of SAS. He will serve as an independent member of the cabinet.

November 2019 marked the 30th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent events that brought freedom from communist domination to many countries of the former “Soviet-bloc.”  In Czechoslovakia, public demonstrations, spearheaded by student movements, sparked the relatively peaceful downfall of the communist government and began the country’s “return to the West,” […]

On September 23, 2019 the Center for European Policy Analysis held its annual ‘CEPA Forum’ in Washington DC entitled, Transatlantic Anniversaries: Legacies and Unfinished Business.  FOS, as it has for several years, served as a co-sponsor of this prestigious event, which represents the major U.S. policy forum focusing on Central and Eastern Europe.  Among the speakers […]

At a conference held on July 17-18 in Washington, the Atlantic Council, a major U.S.-based foreign policy think tank, and GLOBSEC, a Bratislava-based security and foreign policy think tank, announced a collaboration to address current issues focusing on the central European region. At the two-day conference entitled, The United States and Central Europe: Celebrating Europe […]

Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajčák has selected Friends of Slovakia (FOS) Founding Chairman, Amb. Theodore Russell, and  Board Chairman, Joseph Senko to receive the prestigious Golden Medal of the Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic.  The medals were presented to the two recipients on February 15, 2019 by Slovak Ambassador Ivan […]

Friends of Slovakia invited former Slovak Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda to present the 2018 Czech and Slovak Freedom Lecture at the Woodrow  Wilson  Center. The lecture was entitled “Miracles in the Heart of Europe.” The transcript of the former Prime Minister’s optimistic and visionary presentation is below. FOS hopes you will enjoy it as much […]

Czech Ambassador to Great Britain Michael Žantovský will deliver the 2013 Annual Czech and Slovak Freedom Lecture. Amb. Žantovský was formerly Czech ambassador to the United States (1992-1997). The lecture will be hosted by the Wilson Center for International Scholars from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. An invitation will be forthcoming. The event is sponsored by […]

On February 11, 2005, a significant forum on visa issues in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) was organized on Capitol Hill by the East Europe Project at CSIS, together with Friends of Slovakia (FOS) and American Friends of the Czech Republic (AFoCR). The meeting aimed to address the impact of current U.S. visa regulations on political and public relations with the CEE countries. Forum panelists and experts shed light on the legal intricacies of the visa issue and its implications for U.S.-CEE relations, urging for a reconsideration of the status quo.