Ever since the Enlightenment, there have been certain values recognized in much of the West as universal. The most important of these civic or liberal values are: respect for the harm principle, the rule of law, respect for the harm principle, equality, individual rights (and duties), toleration (of religious, racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities), and neutrality of the state in matters of religion. Articulated and advocated in the seventeenth century by Benedictus de Spinoza, Samuel von Pufendorf, and John Locke, these values were spelled out explicitly in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, promulgated in 1948, carried forward in the European Convention on Human Rights two years later, and confirmed in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, drafted in 2000 and coming into force in 2009. These documents were supplemented in 2021 by several EU rulings affirming the equal rights of same-sex couples with heterosexual couples.
Where Slovakia is concerned, practice has not lived up to the legal guarantees, and due to the influence of the Catholic Church, legal guarantees, for example, where same-sex couples are concerned, have not met EU standards. Taking into account also the palpable inequality of women and discrimination against local Hungarians and Roma, Slovakia must be ranked as a severely flawed democracy.
