Robert Fico’s pleas for cheap Russian gas bring Slovaks onto the street
OLD-TIMERS IN Bratislava still call Freedom Square “Gottko”, harking back to Soviet times when it was named after Klement Gottwald, a communist leader of Czechoslovakia. On February 7th demonstrators packed it from end to end, protesting at the current Slovak government’s overtures towards Russia. In total some 100,000 people turned out in rallies across the country. The flags of NATO and the European Union waved; demonstrators chanted “Slovakia is Europe” and called on Robert Fico, the prime minister, to resign. In Bratislava one of the heads of Peace to Ukraine, the main group organising the rally, accused Mr Fico of trying to “turn Slovakia into a Russian province”.
The big Friday-night protests have been going on ever since late December, when Mr Fico flew to Moscow to meet Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin. They gathered force in January after Tibor Gaspar, an MP from Mr Fico’s Smer party, blunderingly told an interviewer that Slovakia might one day consider leaving the EU. Mr Fico and other officials assured voters that the comment had no concrete implications. “All of Robert Fico’s governments have fully declared their pro-European orientation,” says Judita Lassakova, a Smer member of the European Parliament.
But the protests are about much more than foreign policy. Mr Fico has been prime minister four times, beginning in 2006. In 2018 he was forced to resign by huge anti-corruption protests, after investigations into the murder of Jan Kuciak, a journalist, revealed links between the government and underworld figures. Mr Fico was always a rabble-rousing populist, but his Smer party was originally left-leaning and pro-European. During his years out of government that changed: he began adopting the anti-vaccine, Russia-friendly language of Europe’s far right.
After returning to power in October 2023 he abolished an anti-corruption police unit and a special prosecutor’s office which was prosecuting Smer MPs. The government shortened the statute of limitations on corruption cases and reduced penalties for bribes. It transformed the state broadcaster into a pro-government mouthpiece. Heads of cultural institutions such as the National Gallery have been replaced by party loyalists. Mr Fico grew more radical after a failed assassination attempt last May. Many accuse him of leading an autocratic transformation of the state, like that of Viktor Orban in Hungary.
That is an exaggeration. The prime minister “is trying to follow [Mr Orban’s] playbook, but he doesn’t have the ingredients”, says Beata Balogova, editor of Sme, an independent newspaper. He lacks the cadre of clever lawyers who helped Mr Orban reshape Hungary’s legal code. Slovak oligarchs have not bought and neutered the major press organs. The courts remain reasonably independent. Where Mr Orban’s party holds two-thirds of Hungary’s parliament, Smer has a tentative majority dependent on fickle coalition partners.
Unlike Mr Orban, says Milan Nic of the German Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank, Mr Fico has rarely obstructed EU support for Ukraine, despite his pro-Russian rhetoric. His trip to Moscow was prompted by a practical issue: gas. In December Ukraine declined to renew the contract allowing Russian gas to flow through its pipelines to customers in the EU, chiefly Austria and Slovakia.
That struck at one underpinning of Mr Fico’s popularity: low energy prices. Over two-thirds of Slovak households use gas, and consumer prices are fixed by the state. SPP, the government-owned gas distributor, has arranged to get some Russian gas via the Turkstream pipeline, but prices may rise by a third this year. Importing liquified natural gas through European ports is much more expensive, says Michal Lalik, head of SPP’s trade division.
To close its fiscal deficit, which hit 5.7% of GDP in 2024, the government has raised the basic VAT rate from 20% to 23%. Inflation is rising. The business community is grumbling: the employers’ association said Mr Gaspar’s comment about leaving the EU was bad for the economy.
Mr Fico may yet serve out his term. But his coalition could soon fall to 76 of the 150 seats in parliament, or fewer. Several MPs have quit Hlas, a coalition partner founded by defectors from Smer. His other partner, the hard-right Slovak National Party, worries that Smer’s turn to the right is cannibalising its electorate. With the party abandoning its focus on the welfare state, says Miroslav Beblavy, a former MP, “many Smer voters are not sure what it stands for.”
The next demonstration, scheduled for February 21st—the anniversary of Mr Kuciak’s murder—will probably be the biggest yet. Mr Fico has responded to the protests with wild charges. On January 31st he claimed, without evidence, that they were fomented by an armed Georgian group plotting with Ukraine and Slovak opposition parties to carry out a coup. Michal Simecka, the leader of Progressive Slovakia, the biggest opposition party, was dumbfounded. “You can repeat that it’s a fantasy and that the only coup is taking place in Mr Fico’s head, but you feel weird denying it because it’s so absurd.” ■
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