Former Slovak President Čaputová Receives Honorary Doctorate in Florence, Calls for Values in Difficult Times

Former Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová received an honorary doctorate from the European University Institute in Florence, using the occasion to deliver a speech on the importance of upholding democratic values under pressure. "Service to values is not a matter of circumstances. It is a matter of principle," Čaputová said in her address at the prestigious pan-European academic institution. She added that difficult times test values — and reveal them — and that power exposes who we truly are. Čaputová, a liberal pro-European figure who served as Slovakia's president from 2019 to 2024, was widely seen as a counterbalance to the government of Prime Minister Robert Fico, whose Smer-SD party has pursued a more nationalist and Russia-friendly course. Though she left office last year, she remains an influential voice in Slovak public life and a symbol of the country's pro-Western civic movement.