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The winner of last month’s parliamentary elections in Slovakia has agreed to form a coalition government.<\/p>\n
Robert Fico’s populist left-wing Smer-SSD party won the vote with pledges to halt military aid to Ukraine, but denied being pro-Russian.<\/p>\n
Mr Fico – who has previously served as Slovakia’s prime minister – signed a deal on Wednesday with the centre-left Hlas and nationalist SNS parties.<\/p>\n
Together they will control 79 seats in a 150-seat parliament.<\/p>\n
It is not yet known how the parties will fill ministerial posts to form a new government, chaired by Mr Fico, but it seems clear that a key aim will be to end Slovakia’s support for Kyiv.<\/p>\n
“If Smer enters government, we will not send a single round of ammunition to Ukraine,” Mr Fico told supporters during his campaign.<\/p>\n
This, as well as his pledge to resist Western sanctions on Russia, caused some onlookers to compare Mr Fico to Hungary’s populist right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the SNS party – full name: Slovak National Party – is led by the former parliamentary speaker Andrej Danko, who is known to share similar views about the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Back in July, he said that some Russian-occupied territories were not “historically Ukrainian”. He has also previously described Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as a “dear friend”.<\/p>\n
Migration is another issue that Mr Fico has said he wants to tackle while in office – specifically the number of migrants going to western Europe through Slovakia.<\/p>\n
The liberal Progressive Slovakia party, which came second in the election, says it offers a vision of an “open, tolerant, cosmopolitan society” and has advocated following a liberal line within the EU on issues such as green policies and LGBTQ+ rights.<\/p>\n
Smer, Mr Fico’s party, dismisses that vision as “liberal fascism”, campaigning on stability, order and social security instead.<\/p>\n
Peter Pellegrini, the leader of Hlas – a pro-European party – has made clear that any coalition government he is involved in will keep Slovakia’s basic foreign policy in line with its membership of both Nato and the EU.<\/p>\n
“If the government tries to change that, Hlas will leave,” he said before signing the coalition agreement – the full detail of which is yet to be seen.<\/p>\n
The AFP news agency cited Mr Fico as saying: “Specific names and ministries will be included in the coalition agreement, which I will present… to the president [Zuzana \u010caputov\u00e1] in a short time”.<\/p>\n
Mr Fico was forced to step down as Slovakia’s prime minister in 2018 following the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n