Orbánism Claims Another Victim
Petty scandals and embarrassments are masking Slovakia's slide toward authoritarianism.
AMID A SPATE OF ENCOURAGING NEWS from Europe—the EU approved a package of financing for Ukraine in February, inflation is cooling in France and Germany, the Czech Republic managed to find and deliver 800,000 artillery shells to Ukraine, and even the Western Europeans are starting to adjust to the new reality in Europe—there is reason to be concerned as Slovakia’s new leaders emulate Viktor Orbán.
A decade ago, Orbán and his supporters portrayed their “revolution through the ballot box” in Hungary, which involved a new constitution and electoral law cementing the Fidesz party’s grip on economic and political power, as completing the unfinished revolution of 1989. The Slovak version, bound to accelerate following the recent presidential election that brought left-populist Putin admirer Robert Fico to the premiership and one of his loyalists to the presidency, is cruder and lacks the sense of higher ideological purpose that transfixed many international observers on the conservative right.
Instead of the overwrought nationalism and talk of regime change that characterized Hungary last decade, Slovakia has been plunged into irrelevant and petty culture wars. To take but one example, Fico’s government floated the possibility of passing a constitutional amendment to facilitate bear hunting in response to increasing incidence of bear sightings and attacks in populated areas. Bears aren’t anywhere near the most urgent problem facing the country, but it’s a convenient way to pit environmentally minded urban intelligentsia against rural hunters.
Although the proposal has since been dropped, it is illustrative of the deliberate unseriousness with which Fico’s government approaches governing. The strategy adopted by Fico, who is himself an earnest, humorless man, is simple and reminiscent of Donald Trump’s perpetual outrage machine: keep the opposition and the public constantly distracted, confused, and exhausted with the help of an assortment of ridiculous figures who have risen to prominent positions in the new governing coalition.
There is Andrej Danko, leader of a small nationalist party and deputy speaker of Slovakia’s legislature, whose feeble rhetorical skills and a sense of his own grandiosity provide a constant stream of material for social media memes. Earlier this year, he crashed his car into a traffic light at night and then fled the scene. When identified as the culprit, his explanations for what many suspected had been a drunk driving incident were comically convoluted and self-contradictory: Within days, he claimed and denied having been injured in the accident. He supposedly informed the city council and his insurance company, but police found only his license plate—not him nor his car—at the scene. He claimed to have been cleared of drunk driving by a breathalyzer, but it turned out that test was administered fifteen hours after the crash, long enough for him to have sobered up. Local residents, ridiculing Danko’s nationalism, have declared the traffic light a national heritage site and have since been bringing flowers and candles.
More recently, Martina Šimkovičová, culture minister, former TV host, and anti-vax activist, delivered a speech at an international conference in Abu Dhabi that went viral thanks to its broken English and stilted, agonizing delivery.
Yet, under the surface, Fico and friends are following the Orbán playbook at an impressive pace. The governing coalition has managed to stop investigations into corruption scandals and other misdeeds by scrapping the Special Prosecutor’s Office, an independent body tasked with prosecuting corruption-related crimes. They’ve also implemented controversial changes to the criminal code, including dramatic reductions of the statute of limitations for various crimes, potentially immunizing corrupt government officials. A wave of protests greeted the proposed changes in late 2023, but their intensity has since dissipated.
Radio and Television of Slovakia (RTVS), the country’s public broadcaster, is being stripped of its independence and subordinated more directly to the ruling coalition. Following the presidential election, the governing coalition has announced a foreign-agent law, modeled after the Russian and Hungarian examples, to require all NGOs receiving annual funding exceeding €5,000 from abroad to label themselves in all communications as “foreign-funded bodies.” It is also widely understood that a recent proposal to dismiss a third of all civil servants is not motivated by a need for austerity but rather by a desire to force dissenting elements from government service.
Perhaps the most horrifying feature of Slovakia’s Orbánization has been its recent turn toward Moscow. Fico campaigned on the promise of ending all lethal aid to Ukraine. His presidential pick, Peter Pellegrini, presented himself as the candidate of “peace” and warned that his pro-Western competitor would send Slovak troops to fight in Ukraine.
Shortly after arriving in office, the new foreign minister, Juraj Blanár, met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Slovak MPs now commonly give interviews to Russian state media. Unlike in Hungary’s case, where the government seems intent on extracting concrete concessions out of Moscow (low natural gas prices in particular), there does not seem to be any particular public policy purpose to Slovakia’s cozying up to Russia—other than the fulfillment of Fico’s whims.
With a parliamentary majority and control of the presidency, things can get a lot worse. In due course, the governing coalition can be expected to take control of the court system through its appointments to the Council of the Judiciary, which governs, appoints, and disciplines judges. As of now, Slovakia enjoys a reasonably vibrant and pluralistic media market. Yet many of the leading outlets are in the hands of companies that cultivate a close relationship with the government—and, in some cases, even Andrej Babiš, the Czecho-Slovak oligarch-turned-populist politician.
In their day-to-day dealings, Washington and Brussels can expect Fico to be reasonably pragmatic, at least for now. While military donations to Ukraine have indeed stopped, supplies continue to transit Slovakia, and the country is still selling ammunition to the EU and NATO for donation to Ukraine. And while emphasizing his opposition to Western military support to Ukraine, Fico continues to pay lip service to Ukraine’s aspirations to join the EU.
However, nobody should be under any illusions about Slovakia’s direction. With more than three years until the next parliamentary election, there is little at home or internationally that can stop Fico from solidifying power in a way that will make it harder for the rest of Slovakia to fight back.