Pursuing a united European policy on the war in Ukraine was already made extremely complicated by opposition from Hungarian nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban. And now, this is likely to become almost impossible after the results of the Slovak parliamentary elections held on Saturday, September 30. According to the final results announced on Sunday, the national-populist Smer ("direction") party has won with almost 23% of the vote. Its leader, Robert Fico, is in a strong position to become prime minister again, a post he held twice between 2006 and 2018.
Aged 59, Fico campaigned on the promise of aligning the foreign policy of this Central European country of 5.5 million inhabitants with that of neighboring Hungary. His platform includes rejecting military aid to Ukraine because "it only prolongs the conflict," opposing "sanctions that hurt Europe more than Russia" and normalizing relations with Moscow. Denying that he is pro-Russian, the candidate has insisted he wants Slovakia to remain a member of the European Union and NATO. Fico's probable return to power, however, will put an end to the policy of the incumbent pro-Western government, which had gone so far as to give the Slovak army's MiG-29s to Ukraine.
While Slovakia is a smaller neighbor and ally than Poland or Romania, Fico could enable Hungary to break out of its isolation within the Visegrad Group (which also includes the Czech Republic and Poland) and unite the two countries to pursue an anti-Kyiv veto policy at the European Council table. In Budapest, Prime Minister Orban hailed the "indisputable victory" of a "patriot" with whom it is "always good to work together."
At his post-election press conference on Sunday, Fico reiterated that, if he came to power, he would "do everything possible to start peace negotiations" on Ukraine as soon as possible, although he felt that "Slovaks have more pressing problems" than the war afflicting their neighbor. To form a majority, he will need the support of the 27 MPs of the Social Democrat HLAS party, which came third with 14.7% of the vote, and the 10 of the far-right, pro-Russian SNS party, which obtained 5.6%. Founded by Smer dissidents, the HLAS party has complicated relations with Fico, and its leaders said on Sunday that they were leaving the door open to other options.
For its part, the centrist, pro-Western Progressive Slovakia party has not abandoned its bid for power, even though it only won just under 18% of the vote. "We will do everything to ensure that Robert Fico does not reign in Slovakia," declared its leader Michal Simecka on Sunday morning. Simecka campaigned by calling on voters to avoid "the danger" represented by Fico. Fico quit in 2018 following a protest movement spurred by the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak, who had reported on the infiltration of the mafia in Slovakia, the former prime minister managed to make a comeback by describing the dozens of corruption convictions in recent years in his entourage as "political persecution." On Sunday, he confirmed that one of his first decisions would be to oust the special prosecutor in charge of the fight against corruption.
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