The Fico Factor: How Slovakia Will Change After the Elections

The undisguised anti-European, anti-Western and latent pro-Russian rhetoric of certain political forces that are considered favourites in the upcoming parliamentary elections in Slovakia put on the agenda the question of how the results of these elections may affect the consolidated position of the European Union and NATO on the need to support Ukraine in the war waged against it by the Russian Federation. 

First of all, it should be noted that unlike presidential elections, where the winner is always obvious, victory in parliamentary elections, even in parliamentary republics, is not so self-evident.

First of all, all political forces that get to the parliament can be considered winners of parliamentary elections, since there are usually parties that will not win representative mandates at all.

The widespread belief that the winner of parliamentary elections is the party that wins more seats than any of its competitors is wrong, unless, of course, we are talking about a situation where one party wins an absolute majority of seats, which will allow it not to worry about the problem of forming a coalition, as happened, for example, in Ukraine in 2019, when the pro-presidential party "Servant of the People" managed to form a mono-majority. In other cases, the "victory" in parliamentary elections is conditional and usually comes down to which political force will become the core of the formation of a parliamentary coalition and coalition government, where the post of prime minister and the distribution of ministerial portfolios are not always proportional to the support gained during the election race. It is not uncommon for a party with a relative majority of votes not to participate in the formation of a coalition, which was successfully formed without it by several parties, each of which received less support from voters but collectively won more seats in parliament. Moreover, there are situations when fierce opponents are forced to form a coalition together because mathematically and politically other coalition options do not add up. It is clear that in this case, a compromise has to be sought and mutually exclusive positions have to be conceded. 

In short, winning parliamentary elections, especially in parliamentary republics, is usually about compromise...

Favourites in the Slovak Election Race and Possible Coalition Configurations

According to the polls, there is a high probability that the center-left Cours (SMER) party led by Robert Fico may finish first, gaining close to 22% of the vote, which would give it just over 40 seats in the parliament. However, since 76 seats are needed to form a majority, even in the most optimistic scenarios, Fico will need coalition partners. 

Potential partners could be representatives of the Republic party, which, despite its dubious almost neo-fascist reputation, according to opinion polls, could receive about 8% of the vote. It is clear that an alliance with such a political force is not a very tempting prospect for Fico's center-left party. 

There are other nationalist parties with which the ODS could potentially form a coalition. One of them is the Slovak National Party (SNS) or We Are Family (Sme Rodina). However, even in this case, it is far from clear whether they will have enough mandates to form a majority in parliament.

An alternative nucleus for the formation of a parliamentary coalition could be Progressive Slovakia, a liberal association that currently may receive about 30 seats due to the votes of pro-Western voters. 

It seems that the Voice party, led by Peter Pellegrini, a former ally of Robert Fico, will play the role of the "golden share" in the future coalition. However, despite the fact that the Golos party, like Fico's Kurs, is center-left and actually "unstuck" from the latter, it holds much more moderate views than Robert Fico, who became famous, to put it mildly, for his controversial statements regarding the European Union and NATO, as well as the war that Russia has unleashed against Ukraine. With this in mind, it can be assumed that a potential alliance with the Voice could soften Fico's rhetoric and foreign policy.

The Outer Loop

However, no matter how the parliamentary elections in Slovakia end, and no matter what the parliamentary coalition and, accordingly, the coalition government will be, we should hardly fear a radical change in Slovakia's position on both the Euro-Atlantic structures of which this country is a part and on Russian aggression against Ukraine. It is worth recalling that despite his controversial rhetoric, Robert Fico, while serving as prime minister, did give the green light to the imposition of sanctions against Russia after the annexation of Crimea.

However, it cannot be ruled out that, once in office for the third time, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico will try to soften the EU and NATO's position on Russia and complicate the process of providing support to Ukraine, including in terms of Euro-Atlantic integration. However, the extent to which he will succeed will depend not only on who Fico will have to form a coalition with, but also on how decisive and consistent a position on the above issues will be taken by the rest of the EU and NATO members.