PM Robert Fico (source: TASR)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. Brussels is waiting to see about Fico, but a major EU decision on Ukraine is due in December. The Slovak government rejected a previously prepared package of bilateral military aid for Ukraine. Fico IV might ask parliament for a vote of confidence this week.
If you have a suggestion on how to make this overview better, let me know at michaela.terenzani@spectator.sk.
Suspense in Brussels around Fico
The fourth government of Robert Fico made waves in Brussels when it rejected a previously prepared bilateral package of military aid for Ukraine, one that included ammunition for a missile defence system that Ukraine is already using.
“Fico’s government has blood on its hands,” MEP Martin Hojsík of Progressive Slovakia said, condemning the decision.
While there is a logic to his claim – these air defence systems help the Ukrainian forces to intercept Russian missile attacks and thus save lives – and Fico’s cabinet’s decision provoked outrage among critics of his government, it is in line with what Fico has long been promising.
Katarína Roth Neveďalová, an MEP for Fico’s Smer, by contrast denied that Slovakia's foreign policy direction had fundamentally changed. "The only thing that has changed is that we are not going to send weapons to Ukraine," she said.
I travelled to Brussels during last week’s plenary session of the European Parliament – among other things, to find out what impression’s Slovakia’s new government has left in the fortnight since it took office, and the impression left during Fico’s first trip to an EU summit as the newly appointed PM.
Read in this story:
Slovakia is being discussed in Brussels;
Slovakia would benefit if Ukraine were to join the EU;
Fico, too, will decide on whether that happens.
While defenders of the rule of law view with concern the election of a Fico-led Smer administration – the last one disintegrated in the turmoil that followed the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kušnírová in 2018 – the mood could generally be described as one of ‘wait and see’.
