Elections in Slovakia, a country of 5.5 million people on the eurozone’s eastern flank, do not normally generate global headlines. But these are not normal times. Amid fears of growing cracks in western unity over Russia’s war in Ukraine, the victory over the weekend of a pro-Putin populist committed to ending military aid to Kyiv sent an ominous signal.
“Slovakia has bigger problems than Ukraine,” said Robert Fico, in the wake of a win that will have been a cause for satisfaction in the Kremlin. His Smer-SD party, which ran a campaign targeting irregular migrants, LGBTQ+ rights and support for Kyiv, will now seek to lead a coalition government. For Mr Fico, who has been the subject of corruption allegations, and was ousted as leader in 2018 in toxic circumstances, this was a remarkable comeback. For most of Europe, it is one with worrying implications on a number of levels.
The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who has hitherto been isolated in his opposition to European sanctions on Russia and the provision of military assistance to Kyiv, now has an ally for a neighbour. Slovakia’s stocks of ammunition and spare weapons have already been diminished, to the extent that the impact of Mr Fico’s planned U-turn on supplying them may be limited. It is also true that to govern he is likely to need the support of the social democratic Hlas party, which backs continued military support. Nevertheless, the long-term significance of Mr Fico’s victory may be to complicate eventual attempts to bring Ukraine, and other non-EU eastern states, further into Europe’s political community.
For the EU, Mr Fico’s triumph means an enlarged dissident core in central Europe, which will be further consolidated should Law and Justice win a third consecutive election in Poland later this month.
In Budapest and Warsaw, and seemingly now in Bratislava, routine disparagement and rejection of EU norms and values – on minority rights, refugees and the rule of law – has become a winning template for socially conservative, nationalist parties that draw strength from a weaponised cultural Christianity. In a campaign move that came straight out of the Orbán “globalist” playbook, Mr Fico accused Slovakia’s outgoing liberal president, Zuzana Čaputová, of being an American “puppet” and standing up for the interests of George Soros.
Given Slovakia’s membership of the eurozone, and need to access finance from the EU’s Covid recovery fund, there will be a limit to how much trouble Mr Fico will want – or be able – to cause. As Slovakia’s prime minister in the past, he has proved more pragmatic than his domestic political rhetoric implied. Nevertheless, his victory underlines a familiar message that Europe’s progressive forces would be foolish to ignore.
In swaths of central Europe and beyond, the inability of mainstream centre-left parties to forge coalitions of voters that include older, less well-off, less well-qualified voters has become marked. A series of seismic shocks, from the 2008 crash to the war in Ukraine, has unleashed economic insecurity on a grand scale. As with Law and Justice in Poland, Smer-SD’s election pitch successfully combined illiberalism with a generous welfare offer that resonated outside the cities. The accumulating body of evidence suggests that to combat the kind of insular, divisive political template that allowed Mr Fico to prosper, a focus on redistribution as well as rights is needed.
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