A new age of Fico dawns in Slovakia

As soon as Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová appointed the new Slovak government, the now four-time premier Robert Fico of the Smer party outlined what politics he will plough on with.

“You’ll hear a sovereign Slovak voice from Slovak ministries and see sovereign Slovak foreign policy,” PM Fico said on October 25.

In his efforts, he will also be helped out by his foreign minister Juraj Blanár, who lacks diplomatic experience and who shared war-related disinformation in the past.

Fico, a populist leader with pro-Russian views and plans to label non-governmental organisations as ‘foreign agents’, managed to take power shortly before the October EU summit in Brussels where he represents Slovakia for the first time in five years. In 2018, he had to step down as prime minister following mass protests sparked by the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak, who had written about corruption under the previous Smer-led governments.

Before the summit, which takes place on October 26 and 27, Fico attended the European Affairs Parliamentary Committee in the Slovak parliament.

“I'm not going to vote for any Russian sanctions unless the analyses on the impacts of such sanctions are available,” Fico told the committee.

Positions adopted by the committee are binding for Fico at EU summits. However, the committee is now controlled by the Smer-led coalition.

Fico reiterated that his government will not support Ukraine militarily and will call for a peace solution instead. Fico added that it is ‘naive’ to think that Russia, a nuclear superpower, can be defeated with conventional weapons. He said that he supports every peace plan, but also noted that it is unrealistic to think that Russian units will leave Ukrainian lands. Fico repeated that the war in Ukraine, in his opinion, is a conflict between America and Russia, and that the EU has become a project that kills people in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on October 26 that Slovakia was not a big supplier of weapons to Ukraine and the latest decision would not impact the war, the AFP agency wrote on October 26.

At the committee, Fico said that he supports Ukraine’s efforts in joining the EU. However, Ukraine itself must be prepared, the new Slovak premier said before leaving for the summit.

However, Fico might have missed his trip to Brussels had he not fixed a major problem with Rudolf Huliak, a former candidate for environment minister, in time.

The second session of the European Affairs Parliamentary Committee in Bratislava on October 26, 2023. (source: TASR)

Environment minister hiccup

Huliak, a keen hunter, is in the habit of asserting, wherever he goes, that non-governmental organisations have embezzled money from the Environment Ministry to finance the campaigns of specific political parties.

“In the last five to ten years, NGOs have committed evil deeds in Slovakia and disrupted the balance in nature,” he said in an October interview.

Huliak serves as mayor of Očová, a village in central Slovakia, and was elected as an MP in the early parliamentary election held on September 30. The MP, who considers brown bears to be a ‘Brussels’ biological weapon’ to destroy the Slovak countryside, who insults and threatens to kill conservationists, who considers climate change to be a hoax, who calls LGBT+ people ‘sexually disoriented’, and and who says he would travel to Moscow to apologise for Slovakia’s military support of Ukraine, has become notorious in the span of just a few weeks, especially after the emerging Smer-led coalition decided to nominate him for the post of environment minister.

Huliak, who chairs the ultranationalist party Národná Koalícia, got into parliament from 150th place on the Slovak National Party (SNS) election slate thanks to preference votes.

However, President Zuzana Čaputová announced on October 19 that she would not appoint Huliak as a minister. She explained that he questioned Slovakia’s long-term environmental policy and the international obligations to which the country is bound, in addition to approving of violence against opponents and denying climate change.

“There are constitutional and legal reasons, and they are so intense that he cannot hold the post of environment minister,” said the president, adding that she expected the coalition to propose a new name for the post.

Her decision sparked a heated debate over whether the president has the right to not appoint a candidate for minister put forward to her by the future prime minister – even though she made the same decision in a similar case in 2021. On that occasion she refused to appoint a candidate for labour minister in the incoming Eduard Heger government over the nominee’s close ties to a former politician responsible for thwarting a 1997 referendum. The constitution is ambiguous in this area, but none of the existing interpretations say that the president is obliged to appoint any ministerial candidate presented to her.

Despite this, the SNS, Smer’s coalition partner, accused the president of violating the constitution, while Smer chair and future prime minister Robert Fico claimed that Čaputová was thwarting the results of the election and serving other countries.

“Wonderful, indeed,” Fico sarcastically noted.

Čaputová filed a lawsuit against Fico on September 13, citing the lies that he has consistently spread about her.

In addition to the accusations, the incoming premier compared the president’s decision not to appoint the government unless it is complete to ‘nonsense as big as water in a wicker basket’. Fico went on to say that the president, if she wanted to, could appoint the fourth Fico government without accepting Huliak and appoint some other minister from Fico’s list to serve as the environment minister temporarily.

Smer and SNS resisted withdrawing Huliak’s nomination for several days, but conceded on October 24, when the SNS decided to replace Huliak with another ultraconservatative lawmaker, Tomáš Taraba, in an apparent effort to hasten the appointment of the new government to help Fico not miss the summit in Brussels. Taraba was previously elected as an MP for the neo-fascist ĽSNS party at the 2020 election; he enjoys a large following on Facebook and supports the weakening of environmental protection rules.

Huliak was elected the new chair of the Environment and Agriculture Parliamentary Committee in the end on October 25. On the same day, the president eventually appointed the new government.

But for the SNS and Smer, President Čaputová is not the only problem. They have long pointed accusingly at another enemy: non-governmental organisations.

“The era when NGOs ruled this country is now over,” Fico repeated in mid-October.

Environment Minister Tomáš Taraba. He was nominated for the post by the SNS party. (source: TASR)

SNS leader and Deputy Speaker of Parliament Andrej Danko (l) and Národná Koalícia leader and MP Rudolf Huliak (r). (source: TASR)

Fico considers strict ‘foreign agent’ law

For years, Fico has said that non-governmental organisations in Slovakia operate to harm his governments. His party previously ruled the country from 2006 until 2020, with a short break from 2010 to 2012. But after he was forced to leave the post of prime minister in 2018, following the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová, his attacks on NGOs increased. For example, he then began to accuse NGOs of a state coup in Slovakia that he alleged had been masterminded by Hungarian-American philanthropist and billionaire George Soros, a favourite target of vilification by other illiberal leaders like Viktor Orbán, the longtime prime minister of neighbouring Hungary.

A month ago, Fico attacked Transparency International Slovakia (TIS) in a video posted to social media. In it, he hinted at creating a “foreign agent” label that organisations which receive foreign funding would have to use in public in the future. A similar legal device has been used in Russia to effectively neuter opposition to President Vladimir Putin.

After Fico and his partners, Danko and Hlas leader Peter Pellegrini, signed a coalition deal on October 16, promising to increase people’s living standards, Fico yet again said that he would want to see all NGOs operating in Slovakia and funded from abroad labelled “foreign agents”.

He asserted that he would copy and paste the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a US law that orders various political and lobbying groups or individuals in America which are directly linked to foreign governments, corporations or NGOs to register. A similar law came into effect in Slovakia in 2019 during the last Smer-led government. A register of NGOs was launched two years later.

There are more than 75,000 NGOs in Slovakia.

But because Fico is talking about giving NGOs the “foreign agent” label, NGOs such as TIS fear that Fico might wish to introduce a stricter, Russian-style version of FARA.

“If it’s an attempt similar to the one we saw in Georgia, we will use all available legal means against such an attack on civil society,” said TIS.

Georgia dropped its proposed “foreign agent” bill following mass protests earlier this year. Orbán is preparing to submit such a bill for the second time this autumn. The European Court of Justice ruled three years ago that its 2017 version of such a law was illegal.

The Smer leader has not provided any detail of how such a law would work in Slovakia. Nevertheless, he is convinced that “every Slovak should know whose song a given NGO sings”.

The new government was appointed by President Zuzana Čaputová on October 25, 2023. (source: TASR)

Inexperienced foreign minister

It seems clear which song, to use Fico’s words, the Smer-led coalition will sing in the next four years when it comes to foreign policy and especially the war in Ukraine.

“Smer intends sovereignly, in the context of Slovakia’s membership in the EU and NATO, to continue foreign policy in all four corners of the world,” reads Smer’s foreign policy strategy. The party, as well as its new partners SNS and Hlas, rejects supplying military aid to Ukraine, opposes anti-Russian sanctions, and calls for peace.

But the position of Smer and SNS on deals signed by Slovak arms firms that supply Ukraine, which guarantee numerous jobs in Slovakia, remains unclear.

The defence minister and former three-time interior minister, Robert Kaliňák from the Smer party, owns a firm that produces rifles. His party colleague Juraj Blanár, now a foreign minister, said in April that Smer would refuse to allow Slovak arms companies to profit from the war. But in the summer Hlas leader Peter Pellegrini, now the speaker of parliament, talked about the war in Ukraine as an opportunity for the Slovak arms industry.

“I will never say that not even a bullet will leave Slovakia, because Slovakia has factories that produce ammunition,” the Hlas leader said.

Blanár’s nomination as foreign minister has led to raised eyebrows in foreign policy circles.

Fico said he wanted to find someone who would be a “pike” that would make “the old carp in the pond of Slovak diplomacy” work harder. As minister, he will have the authority to approve the sending or withdrawal of Slovak ambassadors. But unlike previous foreign ministers under Smer administrations, like career diplomats Ján Kubiš and Miroslav Lajčák, Blanár has no diplomatic experience or even a foreign policy record to speak of.

He has, however, worked his way up through the Smer party and is considered to be one of Fico’s most loyal supporters.

Opposition leader Michal Šimečka said the selection of Blanár shows that Smer lacks experts on foreign policy.

“It shows that none of the Slovak diplomats were willing to serve as foreign minister,” he said.

Last year, Blanár was a vocal critic of the adoption of a defence cooperation agreement with the USA, claiming that America would build military bases in Slovakia. He also criticised the expulsion of Russian diplomats from Slovakia in 2021, a step taken by the country in solidarity with Czechia following the revelation that Russian agents had caused a deadly explosion at an ammunition warehouse there in 2014.

Right after the war, Blanár shared Smer’s position on the war: “The conflict in Ukraine concerns neither the EU nor NATO, it is a purely American-Russian matter.” That position has not changed.

Earlier this year, Blanár abstained from a vote by the Slovak parliament to label Russia a terrorist regime.

Moreover, Blanár did not shy away from spreading disinformation linked to Ukraine. In February, he tried to discredit Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who had awarded a Ukrainian mountain assault brigade with the honorary title ‘Edelweiss’ for its work. Blanár claimed that the honour was named after a Nazi unit. But the name refers to a protected mountain flower, after which mountain units in many countries are named. Last June, Blanár also spread disinformation on TV about Ukrainians being responsible for the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Fico’s fourth government includes more people who hold pro-Russian views, and not just from Smer. A few years ago, for example, the SNS wrote on Facebook that it would initiate the recognition of the Republic of Crimea by Slovakia in 2024. Its leader also met with Russian officials. Nominated by the SNS, Slovak TV presenter Martina Šimkovičová, the Austria-based star of pro-Russian and disinformation online channel Slovan in recent years, heads the Culture Ministry.

“I reject from the bottom of my heart being labelled as a disinformer,” she said recently.

In 2015, she was fired from the most watched private television channel, TV Markíza, over her anti-immigration social media posts. Since then, she has continued to attack the LGBT+ community regularly.

Culture Minister Martina Šimkovičová. (source: SITA)

Slovak MFA Juraj Blanár. (source: SITA)

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (l) speaks with Robert Fico during a round table meeting at an EU summit in Brussels on October 26, 2023 (source: AP)

Isolated, Fico looks to revive V4

Fico’s decision to form a government with the Slovak National Party has already led to his party’s isolation at the European level.

The Party of European Socialists (PES) grouping explained that its decision to suspend Smer was taken “following the clear divergence from the values of the PES family demonstrated by Smer leader Robert Fico”. This includes Smer’s position on the war in Ukraine, migration, the rule of law, and LGBT+ rights. In 2006, PES suspended Smer for two years after it previously formed a coalition government with the SNS.

The latest PES decision was also embraced by the Socialists and Democrats Group in the European Parliament. As a result, two Smer MEPs gave up their membership, and the third Smer MEP was suspended.

“If you intend to keep scolding us for [our left-wing] politics, you do not understand real life,” Fico told European socialists.

He is now trying to revive cooperation within the Visegrad Four (V4) group at the level of prime ministers. At the EU summit, Fico plans to talk to the Czech, Polish and Hungarian leaders.

“Without the V4, we will not win anything,” Fico told the parliamentary committee.

This story was produced in partnership with Reporting Democracy, a cross-border journalism platform run by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.