The current vice-chair of the HLAS-SD party, Richard Raši, entered high-level politics seventeen years ago when he was appointed minister of healthcare. And he has essentially remained active in politics ever since. He has served as an MP and twice as minister of investment, regional development, and informatization. Since March of this year, he has been the speaker of parliament, and for his first foreign trip in this new role, he traveled to Czechia at the beginning of May.
You have become the second highest constitutional official in Slovakia after the President. Do you have a similar goal to your party’s former leader, Peter Pellegrini, namely to gradually calm the politically charged situation in Slovakia?
The political situation in Slovakia is complicated because the National Council is not composed solely of MPs who care about working for the people. There are also MPs who have built their political careers on a kind of failed reality show and who live by the motto – the worse for Slovakia, the better for them. Their only goal is to get media attention at any cost – they often lie, mislead, and criticize things they themselves did while in government. However, I believe that people can see who brings real solutions and who is only trying to cause harm at all costs. Immediately after taking office, I offered a helping hand to all MPs interested in constructive dialogue and in improving people's lives. I said that the door to my office would be open to all MPs, whether coalition or opposition, if they come with proposals that are feasible and will help improve life in Slovakia. I must also remind you that those who governed from 2020 to 2023 left behind a record debt of 24 billion euros. That is almost 1,400 euros per citizen per year, including the elderly and newborns. And we have to pay off this debt. The opposition pretends that it has nothing to do with them, but it was Matovič, Heger, Gröhling, and also MPs from KDH and PS who participated in those governments – and we must not forget that.
Before becoming speaker of parliament, you were minister of investment and responsible for EU funding. Was Poland a model for you in drawing EU funds, and what do the Poles do better than the Czechs and Slovaks that they achieve such visible results in investing European money?
The Poles have a different system for drawing EU funding. They have higher co-financing rates and more money goes directly to the regions. However, our municipalities could not handle co-financing rates of 30 to 40 percent for projects. When we took office, instead of a new program period being well underway, we faced a complete disaster. Twenty-seven calls for proposals had been issued, only five contracts had been signed, and after 34 months of the program period – almost three years – not a single euro had been drawn. On top of that, there were two billion euros left unused from the previous period. But we managed to deal with it. We completed the previous program period and simultaneously launched the new one. When we left office, three-quarters of the allocations were already in the calls, we had signed 1,400 contracts, and the drawdown stood at 707 million euros. If our successors continue at our pace, the drawdown could reach two billion euros by the end of this year. I hope they succeed and don't look for excuses.
Richard Raši with his mother.
After the Slovak parliamentary elections, was there ever a moment when you personally hesitated about forming a government with Progressive Slovakia, or was going with Smer and SNS clear to you from the start? What moment personally decided it for you?
Even though the media pushed this alternative and tried to steer us toward it, I never seriously considered it. Progressive Slovakia is a marketing party with no experience in running the state – something very similar to Matovič’s OĽaNO. It's a party full of talk about democracy, yet its leaders have no idea what democracy really means. Let me give you a concrete example. When it became clear who would form the new government, they organized protests in town squares against the outcome of democratic elections. People had made a democratic choice, but they couldn't accept it. That is not democracy. No coalition is ideal. But the one we have now, despite its problems, is the only solution that can move Slovakia forward.
In comparison to the rest of Europe, Slovak citizens’ incomes are falling behind. How can this be improved in the foreseeable future?
On the contrary – Slovaks' incomes are growing, but unfortunately, so are their expenses. We had to introduce an unpopular transaction tax, but this is not our tax – it is the price of the governments led by Matovič, his sidekick Heger, and the progressive caretaker prime minister Ódor. If we hadn't introduced it, we would have had to cancel the 13th pension payments or other social benefits. As social democrats, we could never do that, nor would we want to. That’s why we sought a way to maintain the state budget without making life harder for the socially weakest. In the HLAS party, we promised people 13th pension payments. We fulfilled that promise immediately after the election. We promised a strong state. We expelled illegal migrants from the country – migrants about whom today's MEP from Progressive Slovakia and former prime minister Ódor said we should get used to. Before becoming speaker of parliament, I was responsible for regional development and EU funds, and in that area, we fulfilled nearly the entire government policy statement within just 17 months.
Relations with Czechia at the highest level have entered a crisis. Are you aiming to revive cooperation at the parliamentary level?
If you want to cooperate with someone, both sides must want it. The current Czech government – and we must be open about this – is closer to our opposition than to our coalition, and as it decided to limit relations at the highest level, we must respect that decision. However, bilateral relations at the ministerial level work excellently, and I will do everything I can to ensure that they function just as well at the parliamentary level. That’s also why my first foreign trip is to the Czech Republic.
Do you miss eastern Slovakia while living in Bratislava? How often do you get back to your hometown of Košice?
I am a proud Košice native and for many years while working in Bratislava, I have been going home almost every weekend. My family, my mother, and many friends are in Košice. Both of these Slovak metropolises, though hundreds of kilometers apart, have an urban mentality – people live well there, have everything they need, and see the world differently than people from rural areas. As politicians leading Slovakia, we must ensure that all people, whether they live in Bratislava, Košice, Snina, Čierna nad Tisou, Kúty, or Skalité, enjoy the same standard of living and have access to equally high-quality state services such as healthcare, social benefits, and so on.
Before entering politics, you were a doctor for many years and even the director of one of Slovakia's key hospitals. From that perspective, how do you view the COVID years in Slovakia? Would you have done anything fundamentally differently than the government at the time?
I would have done everything differently. I will reference an analysis by former Minister of Health Rudolf Zajac and his team – and he is not a supporter of our government – who concluded that due to the poor management of the pandemic under the governments of Matovič and Heger, over 20,000 people died unnecessarily. That says it all. As a doctor, I have always said, before, during, and after the pandemic, that measures must be based on scientific knowledge, not on whims. We all remember how, during the coldest days, Matovič forced people to undergo unnecessary nationwide testing, resulting in thousands of infections, how he banned seniors from entering stores, how the state failed to secure vaccines, how he brought in the unapproved Sputnik vaccine, and especially how billions of euros were wasted on unnecessary things. Therefore, I am convinced that if those who governed during COVID returned to power, it would be a catastrophe for Slovakia.
The author is a European editor of Deník
CV BOX
Richard Raši (born April 2, 1971, in Košice) has been the Speaker of the National Council of the Slovak Republic and vice-chair of the HLAS-SD party since the end of March 2025.
In 1995, he finished his studies in general medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of Pavel Jozef Šafárik University in Košice and later also completed a first-degree surgery certification and a special exam in trauma surgery. He earned a Master of Public Health degree from the Slovak Medical University in Bratislava in 2004. In 2010, he finished his PhD studies at the Technical University of Košice.
Since 1995, he has worked at the Trauma Surgery Clinic at the L. Pasteur University Hospital in Košice, where he served as deputy director of preventive and therapeutic care from 2004. In March 2007, he was appointed director of the University Hospital Bratislava.
From 2007 to 2020, he was a member of the SMER-SD party but then moved to HLAS-SD. From 2010, he was the mayor of Košice for eight years and served as minister of healthcare for two years starting in 2008. He also served twice as minister for investment, regional development, and informatization (2018–2020 and 2023–March 2025).
Raši is married and has three daughters.
