Slovakia’s populist Prime Minister Robert Fico insisted his policies are “sovereign” after he took part in the EU summit, whose proceedings he had threatened to obstruct earlier.

“Today we have achieved another decision in Brussels, which confirms that we do sovereign, peaceful, Slovak foreign policy oriented on all four world sides,” Fico stated in an entry on his Facebook profile following the EU summit in Brussels on March 20.

Before departing for Brussels, Fico said: “I admit that if we register an attempt for further sanctions as something, which is supposed to derail the peace process, we are to ‘veto’ it,” also claiming that anti-Kremlin sanctions concerning the nuclear industry are supposed to harm Slovak interests.   

Despite his threats, Fico did not cause any turmoil at the summit and later described his participation as focusing on the issue of high energy prices.

“I want to reject the idea of some prime ministers […] that we have to work with the prices which we have now,” Fico was quoted as saying by the Slovak press agency TASR, adding that “we do not have a reason to pay €40 or €45 [per] megawatt-hour just because President Zelenskiy decided to stop gas transit westward through Slovakia.”

For his domestic audience, Fico reiterated he insists on “freedom of decision making” when making conclusions on the military backing of Ukraine on the EU level. Previously he had said that “we say a clear no, but we cannot prevent other countries” from donating military aid to Ukraine.

Fico has stepped up his anti-Ukrainian and pro-Kremlin rhetoric in recent months, exploiting the long signalled end of Russian gas transit through Ukraine.

Slovakia has been for decades an important transit route for Russian gas into Europe, and Fico has complained the state will lose money from gas transit fees.

Prior to the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Slovak state made some €400mn from the fees through its Eustream gas transmission utility, where it has a 51% share, while EPH of Czech energy and media oligarch Daniel Křetínský holds 49% and managerial control. 

Analysts argue that it is the loss of this fee income, together with the close links between Křetínský and the government, that largely explain Fico's aggressive rhetoric, including threats to end the country's humanitarian aid to Ukraine, together with the populist premier's reliance on the pro-Kremlin electorate.

Fico’s Smer party, originally formed as a social democratic party in the early 2000s, drifted deep into national conservative waters after he was chased away from power in 2018 following mass demonstrations sparked by the cold-blooded murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancé, which rocked the country and looked to end Fico’s storied political career.

Fico reinvented himself as a national conservative while insisting on protecting the welfare state and made a comeback to power in 2023 on an anti-Ukrainian ticket, calling for peace negotiations with the Kremlin.

Smer is now trailing in the polls behind the largest opposition party, centrist Progressive Slovakia, and Fico managed to avert a crisis inside his left-right ruling coalition after a cabinet reshuffle which brought into the cabinet rebelling legislators from far-right SNS and centre-left Hlas, restoring the narrow parliamentary majority of 79 along which the Smer-Hlas-SNS coalition was formed.