Slovakia’s president will appoint a new government on Wednesday led by three-time leftist prime minister Robert Fico, who won a 30 September election with pledges to end military aid to Ukraine and battle illegal migration, according to Euractiv.
The path to appointing a government from Fico’s three-party coalition was cleared after the nationalist SNS party put forward a new environment minister on Tuesday, following President Zuzana Čaputová’s objection to their original nominee.
Fico is forming a government with SNS and the centre-left HLAS, hoping to be in office in time for a European Union summit beginning on Thursday where Ukraine and migration will be on the agenda.
Čaputová’s office said she had now received a full list of ministerial nominations after the change, allowing the government’s appointment to go ahead on Wednesday when the new parliament opens.
Fico campaigned heavily on pledges to end military aid to Ukraine, make foreign policy independent of EU partners and the United States, and get tough on protecting borders from migrants seeking to make it to western Europe.
His return as prime minister – a position he quit in 2018 amid mass public protests against corruption after journalist Ján Kuciak was murdered – will sway some of Slovakia’s policies, although one of his partners has promised to prevent any hard shift in EU and NATO commitments.
Čaputová had rejected SNS’s first environment minister nomination, Rudolf Huliak, citing his denial of climate change and verbal attacks on environmental campaigners.
The new nominee is Tomas Taraba, a far-right politician who won a parliamentary seat in the 30 September election on the SNS ticket.
“I will do everything to ensure there is a stable government in these next four years,” SNS chief Andrej Danko told a televised news conference. “I believe that Robert Fico can happily go to Brussels on Thursday.”