PM Robert Fico with Czech PM Petr Fiala. (source: SITA/Petr David Josek)
Czech Premier Petr Fiala will follow tradition and travel to Slovakia as his first official foreign trip if reelected [next year], despite his Wednesday’s decision to suspend the informal joint sessions of the Slovak and Czech governments for the foreseeable future.
“Yes, I’d go there. I’d see no problem in it,” Fiala said, as quoted by the ČTK news agency. “We share not only the same history with Slovakia, but our societies have natural ties and these are not created by politics. Yet politics should do all it can to develop and maintain them.”
Two independent countries emerged after the fall of Czechoslovakia in 1993.
Currently, the Czech cabinet has an issue with Slovakia’s foreign policy, which the Slovak administration describes as ‘sovereign’. Fiala already confirmed this at a recent V4 summit in Prague.
On March 6, Fiala took a step further and called off the upcoming joint meeting with the Slovak cabinet - also in light of the approaching Slovak presidential election.
Meeting with Lavrov
Unlike most EU member states, the Slovak government refuses to support military aid to Ukraine - although it hasn’t stopped commercial military contracts - and calls for peace in Ukraine without urging Russia to withdraw troops from Ukraine’s territory. In addition, Slovak PM Robert Fico, who doesn’t think that anti-Russian sanctions have worked, is convinced that Ukrainian neo-Nazis are to blame for the war in Ukraine.
