Robert Fico, 59, has played a central role in Slovak politics since it gained independence in 1993 and has served as prime minister longer than any other leader.
Slovakia, a landlocked country of around five million people, gained its independence after the so-called Velvet Revolution, a series of popular, non-violent protests in 1989 against the Communist Party in what was then still Czechoslovakia. . That year, the Berlin Wall fell, communist power in much of Eastern Europe collapsed, and the Cold War effectively ended.
Fico, who had been a member of the Communist Party while it was in power, founded the Smer party in the late 1990s. He began the first of his three terms as prime minister in 2006, serving four years before moving to the opposition after of his coalition losing an election. Fico returned to power in 2012, but resigned as prime minister in July 2018 following mass protests over the murder of a journalist, Jan Kuciak, and his fiancee, Martina Kusnirova, who had been uncovering government corruption. The protests, which shook the country, were the largest seen since the Velvet Revolution; The protesters demanded the resignation of the government and new elections.
Slovakia ranks high in independent assessments of press freedom, but protesters also sought deeper changes in the country Fico had overseen.
The Smer party started on the political left, but has increasingly adopted right-wing views on cultural and immigration issues. Much of the international debate about Fico’s leadership in recent years has focused on his ties to President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, Slovakia’s southern neighbor. Like Orban, Fico has been a staunch critic of the European Union.
After a parliamentary election last fall, Fico began his third term as prime minister and then underwent heart surgery the following month. He emerged to form a coalition government after winning around 23 percent of the vote, having campaigned against sanctions that were imposed on Russia after it began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Not a single The country’s single round of ammunition should be sent to Ukraine. , he had told voters.
That stance, in a country where pro-Russian sentiment had been historically significant, worried EU leaders in Brussels, who said they feared Slovakia could form a pro-Russian alliance with Orban and, potentially, Italy’s leader Giorgia Meloni. , which would prevent support for Ukraine in the European Union. At the time, it was also seen as a sign of the apparent erosion of the pro-Ukrainian bloc that Europe had formed after the invasion.
Slovakia’s military contributions to Ukraine were insignificant compared to countries such as the United States and Great Britain. But last year it became one of several European Union countries on Ukraine’s borders to block imports of its grain, fearing it could undercut Slovakia’s farmers.
In April, a Fico ally, Peter Pellegrini, won the election to become president of Slovakia. The position is largely ceremonial, but analysts said the victory strengthened the control of Russian-friendly political forces in Central Europe, as Pellegrini opposed providing military and financial aid to Ukraine.
Mr. Fico was born on September 15, 1964 to a working-class family in the town of Topolcany, in the Nitra region, in what is now Slovakia. He graduated in 1986 from Comenius University in Bratislava, where he earned a law degree, according to the Slovak government website. He earned a doctorate from the Institute of State and Law of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and served in the army from 1986 to 1987.
Fico studied in the United States, Britain, Finland, Belgium and France, specializing in human rights and criminal law, according to the government website. He married Svetlana Ficova, a lawyer and teacher, and they have a son. News in Slovakia says that the couple is separated.
May 16, 2024
:
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of Italy’s leader. This is Giorgia Meloni, not Georgia.
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