Slovaks see threat in the US, shows Globsec survey

If a referendum on NATO membership were to be held in the near future, only 58 percent of Slovaks would vote to remain. At the same time, support for NATO membership increased in almost all countries at the EU's eastern border after the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Over the past year, Slovakia has also become much more Eurosceptic, trust in its army has dropped significantly, and Slovaks view the aid provided to Ukraine as a provocation of Russia. This follows from the latest Globsec Trends 2023 survey carried out by the security think tank Globsec, on a sample of 8,000 people in eight states at the EU's eastern border.

Few other countries have seen such a significant decline in pro-Western sentiments as in Slovakia. "The results of the survey show a deepening of the differences between more and less resilient countries. And the least resistant to manipulation and pro-Russian narratives are Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia," says the director of Globsec's Centre for Democracy and Resilience, Dominika Hajdu.

This is also evidenced by the fact that more and more Slovaks blame the West for the war in Ukraine and see the US as a threat.

Less EU and less NATO

Up to 86 percent of Romanians wish to remain in the European Union, support for membership even increasing by more than 10 percentage points over the last year. While Romania is the most pro-European of the surveyed countries, Slovakia found itself on the opposite side of the scale, with 64 percent of Slovaks saying that they would vote to remain in the Union in a possible referendum. Globsec found a significant drop in support for Slovakia's membership by 13 percentage points.

The fact that Slovakia is among the most Eurosceptic nations in the EU was also confirmed by the Eurobarometer survey in autumn last year. At that time, only 44 percent of Slovaks considered membership in the EU a good thing, 47 percent of Slovaks describing membership as neither good nor bad.