Slovakia’s Fico is back after being shot. And so are the country’s protesters. – POLITICO

Change of direction

After surviving the illiberal government of Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar in the 1990s, Slovakia elected a pro-Western government in 1998, putting the country back on track for NATO and EU membership, which it gained in 2002 and 2004 respectively.

But after eight years of brutal reforms and creeping corruption, the electorate turned to Fico, a social democrat, in 2006. Apart from a brief period out of power in 2010-12, the pragmatic Fico governed the country as the mainstream EU leader for 12 years.

However, in 2018, Fico was removed from office in the largest protests since the country’s independence in 1993. Protesters took to the streets in their tens of thousands to protest the killing of journalist Ján Kuciak and his partner Martina Kušnírová, and to call for the cabinet to resign. Kuciak had been investigating ties between Fico’s government and Italy’s ‘Ndrangheta mafia.

But after a new interregnum with another divided centre-right government, Fico returned to power in 2023 on the back of a pro-Russian, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-EU campaign that also included refusing to send weapons to Ukraine.

“There is little doubt in most European capitals that Fico is pursuing an agenda that runs counter to the EU’s core value of the rule of law,” said Anton Spisak, a Slovak academic at the Centre for European Reform think tank.

In March, Fico ordered the closure of a special prosecutor’s office that was handling the country’s most serious corruption and organized crime cases, some of which involved politicians and business associates with ties to Smer.