| Andrej Danko | |
| Office3: | Member of the National Council |
| Term Start3: | 25 October 2023 |
| Term Start2: | 25 October 2023 |
| Office1: | Speaker of the National Council |
| Term Start1: | 23 March 2016 |
| Term End1: | 20 March 2020 |
| Predecessor1: | Peter Pellegrini |
| Successor1: | Boris Kollár |
| President1: | Andrej Kiska Zuzana Čaputová |
| Party: | Slovak National Party |
| Birth Date: | 12 August 1974 |
| Birth Place: | Revúca, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia) |
| Alma Mater: | Comenius University (JUDr.) |
| Office2: | Deputy Speaker of the National Council |
| 1Blankname2: | Speaker |
| 1Namedata2: | Peter Pellegrini Peter Žiga (acting) |
| Alongside2: | Ľuboš Blaha, Michal Šimečka, Peter Žiga and Tibor Gašpar |
| Term Start4: | 23 March 2016 |
| Term End4: | 20 March 2020 |
| Children: | 2 |
| Office5: | Chair of Slovak National Party |
| Term Start5: | 6 October 2012 |
| Predecessor5: | Ján Slota |
Andrej Danko (born 12 August 1974) is a Slovak politician who was the Speaker of the National Council of the Slovak Republic from 2016 to 2020 and Chairman of the nationalist Slovak National Party since 2012.
Born in Revúca, Danko studied at the Faculty of Law at Comenius University in Bratislava.[1] After compulsory military service, he founded several commercial companies and worked as an independent lawyer.[1]
Between 2006 and 2010, Danko was an assistant in the National Council of Slovakia and a member of several parliamentary commissions. He became first vice-president of the Slovak National Party in 2010. In 2012, Danko became the chairman of the party after getting support from many of the party's members, succeeding Ján Slota.[1]
On 23 March 2016, Danko was elected Speaker of the National Council.[2] He later called for the burqa to be banned in Slovakia.[3] [4]
In September 2016, while in his position as the Speaker of the Parliament, Danko was promoted by eight ranks (from OR-4 to O-2), to Captain in Reserve of the Slovak Army, by Minister of Defence . The promotion was viewed by as a sign of corrupt government as a promotion by eight ranks has never happened in the history of Slovak Army, not at all to someone who has only joined mandatory national service for the period of one year. On 29 April 2020, Minister of Defence Jaroslav Naď canceled his rank.[5] [6] [7]
In 2018, Danko was accused of plagiarism of his doctoral thesis at Matej Bel University in 2000. When media showed interest in his thesis, he asked the university to ban public access to it. Following public pressure, Danko removed the ban after one month and the university library allowed the public to see the thesis, but not to take pictures of it.[8] The university set up a commission to review his thesis later that November.[9] According to the conclusion published by the commission in January 2019, the rigorous procedure met valid regulations, but the thesis contains parts that only slightly differ from original sources, most of the thesis is the same to a large extent and it preserves also the structure of sources without proper citation or paraphrasing.
In 2019, Danko presided over the ceremonial assembly of the National Council of the Slovak Republic on the occasion of presidential inauguration of Zuzana Čaputová in the Slovak Philharmonic, and delivered an unscheduled speech to address the participants. This caused a breach of a protocol which states that duties of the outgoing president cease at 12.00 GMT+1 and the elect takes office.[10] Slovak laws state that in an event of vacant presidential seat, some competences of the president are passed to the Speaker of the National Council and to the Government of the Slovak republic.[11] Once Čaputová was sworn in, some polemics concerning who was the president for the seven-minute term. Some people (including the Office of the National Council[12] and Peter Kubina, law consultant of Zuzana Čaputová[13]) said that the president was still Andrej Kiska, but Ladislav Špaček said that there was no president.[14]
Andrej Danko lost his driver's license on Wednesday, January 17, 2024. This happened six days after a traffic accident in which he damaged a traffic light column in Bratislava's Dúbravka at the intersection of Saratovská and Repašská streets.[15] He told JOJ 24 that he ran away from the scene of the accident, which happened at 11:21 p.m. He justified his action with the words "...because I can't write a report with a column".[16]