Slovakia chooses nationalism and elects Pellegrini President. PM Fico celebrates

Brussels – Slovakia has chosen and in a way that can only cause concern in Brussels. The speaker of the national parliament and leader of the ruling HLAS-SD party, Peter Pellegrini, won in a comeback over former foreign minister and the candidate backed by the center and liberal oppositions, Ivan Korčok, in Saturday’s (April 6) runoff presidential election. As of June 15, he will be the EU member country’s new head of state. To the enormous satisfaction (and relief) of Prime Minister Robert Fico, who can start counting the days before he has a free field to push the policies of the pro-Russian majority composed of Social Democrats and the far right, unhindered by the President of the Republic.

Overturning the outcome of the first round of voting on March 23 – in which Korčok had surprisingly overtaken Pellegrini by more than five percentage points – the leader of the party that handed over power to the red-black coalition after the autumn 2023 parliamentary elections won 53.12 percent of the vote in the runoff, in an election round that recorded one of the highest turnout results since the birth of the Slovak Republic (61.14 percent, compared to 51.9 in the first round). “The government should not fear that the presidential palace will become an opportunistic center for the opposition as it has been for the past 10 years,” Pellegrini immediately lashed out, rebelling against the current president, Zuzana Čaputová, and already providing a preview of the position he will take as head of state vis-à-vis the executive led by  the ally and leader of the Social Democracy SMER-SSD Fico.

Although the presidential office in Slovakia is predominantly ceremonial, the head of state can resort to Constitutional Court reviews in case of controversial laws: this is the power that one must look to understand in what direction Slovakia may soon be heading, much like the one that has been in place for more than a decade in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. With Pellegrini at the presidential palace, Premier Fico will have carte blanche to push forward the legislative process on any controversial policy, unlike under incumbent President Čaputová in recent months. After Parliament approved the critical reform of the Criminal Code, the president signed the legislation but filed an appeal with the Constitutional Court, which suspended part of the law until the judges issued their ruling. Now, there are fears in Brussels that the red-black coalition will not only push harder on other, more restrictive media and civil society freedom laws but also on an even more favorable position toward the Kremlin at a crucial moment for the unity of the 27 Member States for the financial and armed support for Ukraine’s resistance against Russian invasion.

The Red-Black Slovakia

Two months into Pellegrini’s presidential term, the nationalist turn for Slovakia is now complete. After the September 30, 2023 legislative elections, the pro-Russian Social Democracy of SMER-SSD emerged as the leading force in Parliament, followed by the Progressive Party of the former vice president of the EU Parliament, Michal Šimečka, and the Social Democrats of HLAS-SD. Pellegrini’s 27 deputies were instrumental in forming a majority with the two pro-Russian forces – the Social Democrats of SMER and the extreme right-wing Slovak National Party – even though the party leader himself assured that “with our presence, we will ensure that Slovakia’s membership in the EU and NATO will not be jeopardized.” The claims, however, clashed with Pellegrini’s recent accusations during the presidential election campaign against rival Korčok of wanting to “take the country to war” because Bratislava promised greater alignment with Brussels on armed support for Ukraine.

From left: Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, and the future president of the republic, Peter Pellegrini (credits: Vladimir Simicek / Afp)

The decision to start a pro-Moscow government also had consequences at the European level. On October 12, the Chair of the Party of European Socialism (PSE) decided to suspend membership of the Slovak SMER-SSD and HLAS-SD parties, and the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament opted to suspend the membership of the three Slovak MEPs due to concerns over policies on the merits of Russia’s war against Ukraine, migration, the rule of law, and the rights of the Lgbtq+ community. All of this has been compounded in recent months by a wave of protests for the go-ahead to the reform of the Criminal Code, which provides for the abbreviation of the statute of limitations for the most serious crimes – from 20 to 5 years – and the abolition of the office of the special prosecutor dealing with crimes such as those related to organized crime and high-level corruption. The opposition’s complaint is of an attempt to weaken the judiciary – in favor of Fico’s party members and supporters of the high-level government – in a country where the current prime minister had to resign in 2018, following the murder of journalist Ján Kuciak and his girlfriend Martina Kušnírová, who had exposed links between the ‘ndrangheta and the Slovak elite (including members of his SMER party).

This reform of the Penal Code could open in Brussels a clash similar to the one in Hungary that led to the activation of the conditionality mechanism on the rule of law. At the time of the presentation of the draft, the EU Commission, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (Eppo), and the EU Parliament warned Bratislava that changes to the Penal Code could “seriously” compromise the level of protection of the EU’s financial interests in Slovakia, specifically in the area of corruption, fraud, and mismanagement of EU funds. And in this scenario, countermeasures in Brussels would be inevitable. With its entry into force on March 15 — with some slight modifications to meet the objections of the three EU institutions — the Commission has been called to assess the reform as a whole and decide whether there are still concerns that warrant action, ranging from infringement proceedings to activation of the rule of law conditionality mechanism.