El socialdemócrata populista Robert Fico won Slovakia’s elections with his party Smer in October 2023, returning to power after leaving it in 2018 amid a wave of popular protests sparked by the assassination of an investigative journalist. His nationalist, pro-Russian, and anti-immigration rhetoric, echoing the tone of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, resonated with voters and earned about 23 percent of the vote. Since then, Fico’s direction has raised concerns within the European Union. On May 15, 2024, he was shot in Handlová, near the center of the country.
The veteran politician, aged 59, has led the government on two occasions: from 2006 to 2010 and again from 2012 to 2018. He has skillfully tapped into discontent among lower-income groups and rural communities, driven by inflation, shrinking purchasing power, and the erratic management of the center-right coalition, which lost a vote of no confidence last December.
Fico opposes the European Union refugee relocation quotas proposed by Brussels, promises to cease military aid to Ukraine if he governs Slovakia, and pledges to strengthen ties with Russia again.
In the past he has argued that the arrival of migrants from Muslim-majority countries carries the risk of terrorism, and he once vowed to monitor every Muslim living in Slovakia closely. He also opposes granting same-sex couples equal marriage rights.
His stance and rhetoric invite comparisons to Viktor Orbán; as one analyst noted, Fico comes across as a pragmatic technocrat who is adept at electoral politics. He is described as rational and capable of leveraging Slovakia’s traditional sympathy toward Russia without becoming a full-throated pro-Russian ideologue.
Origin in the Communist Party
Fico began his political career with the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1986, continuing his path in the left-wing Democratic Left (SDL) after reformers split from the movement. He founded the Smer party in 1999, which became the main alternative to the liberal reform agenda of the center-right coalitions that governed the country from 1998 to 2006 and again from 2010 to 2012.
His notable achievement was Slovakia’s entry into the euro area in January 2008, ahead of the Czech Republic, which remains outside the single currency. A football enthusiast, Fico is married to a law professor and is a father to a son. [Citation: Civic Institute, Prague]