WHY SLOVAKIA’S AUTHORITARIAN TILT MATTERS TO AMERICA

By many measures, Slovakia’s three decades of independence following its peaceful divorce from the Czech Republic at the end of 1992 have been a success story. The country joined the European Union and NATO in 2004 and adopted the Euro in 2009. It lives peacefully with its neighbors and its large Hungarian minority – despite Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s famous sharing of an ”historical map” claiming large parts of Slovakia in 2020. But for those paying attention, the country’s trajectory since Robert Fico became prime minister for a third time in October 2023 suggests a setback for Slovak institutions and a headache for European security rivaling Hungary’s embrace of authoritarians in Russia, China and the most extreme corners of the US conservative movement. In particular, the elevation of a man named Pavol Gašpar – the son of an indicted Fico loyalist mired in scandal who appears to lack any significant experience in the intelligence world – to the head of the country’s main intelligence agency, the Slovenská Informačná Služba (Slovak Information Service or SIS) should ring alarm bells in Washington about the reliability of Slovakia as a NATO member on Ukraine’s border.

Notably, Fico – who survived an assassination attempt in May that left him gravely wounded – has sent mixed signals to EU and NATO partners. He has mostly avoided the foreign policy showmanship of his Hungarian counterpart. Still, he, alone among EU leaders, praised Orbán’s high-profile “peace mission” this summer to Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing, despite its lack of any specific or substantive plan, although he also pulled a U-turn in January by supporting a EUR50 billion aid package to Ukraine after first opposing it. Beyond cozying up to Orbán (and presumably not looking too closely at the maps in his counterpart’s office), the twists and turns are hard to track. Even as the country took delivery of its first F-16s, ordered from the US in July to replace Soviet-era fighters donated to Ukraine under the previous government, defense officials in the current government claimed the transfers of the old fighters broke the law. Fico has taken a page from Orbán in condemning “progressive ideologies” but has yet to follow Orbán’s path by traveling to Russia or headlining a CPAC conference. In short, Fico has focused his energies on the home front.

These local measures are alarming but are also incremental, reshaping key institutions and removing oversight as they go. As Dalibor Rohac from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), writing earlier this month in the EU Observer, noted, “the governing coalition proceeded in small steps — each quite insignificant — to consolidate its control over the country”. These include establishing greater political control over RTVS, the public service broadcaster, judicial reforms that abolish the key position of special prosecutor that had centralized and added independence and heft to corruption investigations (these are now thrown back to local prosecutors) and even a huge tax hike on books (because, er, “wealthy people” read them). Fico has also pressured independent media, going after TV Markiza, a channel owned by the family of late Czech tycoon Petr Kellner, which he accused of “putting rat poison in our coffee” with critical coverage. Journalists at the outlet have claimed their editors have pushed a softer line under government pressure.

Human resources

Along with legislation, Fico’s government, led by his party, Smer (Direction), has brought back controversial figures from his previous terms and mainstreamed other radical figures. Some of these appointments have been a matter of doling out jobs to the minority parties in the coalition, including left-leaning Hlas and the far-right Slovak Nationalist Party. The election of President Peter Pellegrini, a Fico ally who previously served in Fico’s previous government and succeeded him as prime minister in 2018, in April, has removed yet one more check on the government’s power.

Outgoing President Zuzana Čaputová had used her limited constitutional powers to block the most egregious cabinet appointments and slowed but could not stop the controversial judicial reform. Notably, she blocked the appointment of Robert Kaliniak as interior minister – which would have him in charge of national law enforcement – over long-standing corruption allegations. Instead, Fico gave him the defense portfolio. She also vetoed the nomination of rightwing figure Rudolf Huliak, a climate-change denier who once reportedly threatened to hang an ecological activist, as environment minister. Other far-right figures from coalition parties did make it into the government, including Martina Simkovicova, who lost her job as presenter at TV Markiza for her comments about migrants and who has blamed the LGBTQ+ community for Europe’s declining birth-rate, as cultural minister.

For Slovaks who oppose Fico, the return of figures like Kaliniak is particularly dispiriting. The minister resigned in 2018, followed by Fico himself, in the aftermath of the murders of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova, the subject of an indispensable and haunting 2022 documentary, the Killing of a Journalist. The murders should have been a turning point in Slovakia’s political life, but today seem more like a speed bump. While the assassin and immediate organizer of the killings were tried, no high level figures from the business or political world have been held to account (a court acquitted a businessman accused of being the mastermind in 2023). Now, many of the same faces from 2018 are back. As a further insult, earlier this year Fico tried to put the former head of the Slovak Police, Tibor Gašpar, in charge of the SIS as the country’s combined foreign and domestic spy agency.

Unfit for purpose

How quickly things change. Back in November 2020, in the aftermath of the Kuciak affair, the authorities detained Gašpar and other senior law-enforcement figures for alleged criminal conspiracy, corruption and abuse of power as part of an investigation dubbed Operation Purgatory. Slovak media have linked him to an organized criminal group allegedly led by Slovak businessman Norbert Bödör, reportedly a relative. Yet, the elder Gašpar has thrived since and is an MP and deputy speaker of the house. Fico began mentioning him as a candidate for head of the SIS late last year. This has reportedly damaged an agency long facing credibility issues linked to its politicization and even criminality under Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar in the 1990s. Investigative journalism outfit VSquare (a TDP partner) and its partner ICJK.sk cited sources as warning that “multiple allied intelligence services had already stopped sharing more sensitive information on the war in Ukraine and counter-intelligence matters concerning Russia and China with Slovakia.” CEPA bluntly termed it “an intelligence black hole” in the middle of Europe.

It appears the Tibor Gašpar candidacy was a bridge too far, even for the current government. So, they nominated his son, Pavol Gašpar, to head the agency. He lacks both a criminal record and experience in the intelligence world. The younger Gašpar, previously a state secretary at the Ministry of Justice, has, however, reportedly threatened to kill a prosecutor and sought to discredit a judge. The outgoing president opposed his appointment, yet, according to a terse statement on the SIS website, he became director in August. It may not quite be a new low for an SIS that was once reportedly implicated in the kidnapping of a Slovak president’s son, but underlines that Slovakia’s government has ensured that its main intelligence service has zero credibility at home or abroad.

It’s tempting to see Fico as an Orbán “mini-me” with more parochial views and little apparent appetite for rubbing shoulders with American conservatives or launching his own peace missions. The primary worry with Fico is less his ties to hostile powers and more about the normalization of corrupt, extremist and/or unqualified political and security figures. This could create a level of impunity that could threaten Slovakia’s viability as an EU state and member of NATO, and offers Russia – which helped create an information space replete with conspiracy theories to help Fico and his allies get elected last year – opportunities to exploit the situation. This should concern Americans, as among other things, Slovakia produces munitions for Ukraine today and is part of the armaments supply chain in a region critical for NATO. Furthermore, like any EU state, it can choose to veto all major moves, potentially including future aid packages to Ukraine. Washington and Brussels have decided to look the other way if Fico plays ball at the multilateral level, however distasteful and dangerous his domestic game may be. It would be in America’s interest to address Fico’s actions directly and use aircraft deliveries and other leverage to force basic steps, such as competent intelligence collection and counter-intelligence measures at the heart of Europe.