Do we like them?

Do we like Peter Pellegrini?

Our score: 4 out of 10. He signed a constitution change that shuts out trans people, and his campaign money is questioned, but police found no grounds to prosecute and he has pushed back on some bills.

Pellegrini won Slovakia's presidency in April 2024 with about 53 per cent of the vote, beating the pro-Western diplomat Ivan Korčok. He's a former prime minister and an ally of Robert Fico, whose government is widely described as pro-Russia. The presidency is mostly ceremonial, but he can sign laws or send them back to parliament.

The cloud over him is the money behind that campaign. Reporting says he was fined €10,000 over a €250,000 transfer from his party's account to his campaign after the election, and watchdogs argue the spending went past the legal limit. The Prosecutor General reportedly said his immunity as president ties investigators' hands, and the fine might even be returned. In 2026 it was alleged an influencer had been offered €30,000 to back him; he denied paying anyone, and in late October police found no reason to prosecute.

Now the harm check. On 30 September 2025 he signed the constitutional amendment that recognises only two sexes, and also bans surrogacy and restricts adoption for same-sex couples, according to reporting on it. He said the majority in parliament had to be respected. We found no speeches of his campaigning against trans people, but putting his name to it is his own act, and for a queer reader that's a real stain.

He isn't a rubber stamp on everything. In April 2025 he vetoed a bill giving the Prosecutor General a life annuity after only a short time in the job and sent it back to parliament. That is a small check on his own coalition, and it counts.

The gaps are honest ones: we found nothing from him on climate, and no charity record that we could verify. Our fetch tool was also rate-limited, so most pages were read only as search summaries, not in full.

So where does that leave us? He's not a culture-war firebrand and there's no sign of a slide into conspiracies. But signing an amendment that locks trans people out of the constitution, plus a campaign-funding saga that has not been fully put to rest, means we sit on the fence and lean to the cautious side.