Slovakia’s election will likely spell the return of former prime minister Robert Fico – which could be bad news for civil society, not just in the country but in the European Union (EU).

The 30 September parliamentary vote saw Fico’s party, Smer, come first with almost 23 per cent of the vote, accounting for 42 seats in the 150-member parliament. Coalition governments are the norm in Slovakia, which has only once had a majority government under democratic rule. Fico has been invited by the President Zuzana Čaputová to form a coalition, making him Slovakia’s likely next prime minister.

In some ways, this marks a return to form. Smer, founded by Fico in 1999, has come first in every parliamentary election since 2006, apart from 2020 when it finished second, and Fico has been prime minister twice before. But in other ways it suggests a dangerous turn.

Political disaffection on the rise

Slovakia’s politics have been in flux for some time now. In 2018, the murder of young investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his partner Martina Kušnírová sparked public outrage. Kuciak had been investigating links between Slovak politicians, business leaders and the mafia. The killing was alleged to have been ordered by a prominent business leader whose activities Kuciak had frequently covered.

The killings brought mass protests against Fico and his government, associated with corruption and impunity, and Fico was forced to resign. The political repercussions continued. Čaputová was elected Slovakia’s first female president in 2019. With a background in civil society, she said she’d been prompted to stand by the murder of Kuciak and Kušnírová.

Then the parliamentary election in 2020 saw Smer defeated by an anti-corruption alliance, Ordinary People and Independent Personalities. Slovakia seemed set for a fresh start. But the four-party coalition government that resulted was characterised by in-fighting and broadly seen as ineffectual in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Prime Minister Igor Matovič lasted barely a year before he was forced to quit following resignations over a secretive deal to buy COVID-19 vaccines from Russia, something seen as going against the government’s promise to align more closely with the EU.

The rejigged administration under the next prime minister, Eduard Heger, became a minority government following the departure of one of its partners in September 2022, before losing a no-confidence vote in December 2022. It continued to govern with a strictly limited mandate until May 2023, when it handed over to a caretaker government. It hadn’t taken long for the optimism to dissipate.

Fico’s career had seemed over in 2018. But he’s the latest political beneficiary of disaffection. Smer is ostensibly a social democratic party with centre-left origins, but Fico’s reaction to losing power in 2018 was to change tack, embracing a more populist, socially conservative, nationalist and pro-Russia agenda.

Civil society vilified

As well as disaffection with a squabbling, self-interested government and continuing corruption, the high cost of living – an issue seen in contemporary elections around the world – was also to the fore. Fico further benefited from fatigue over the war across the border in Ukraine and anti-migrant sentiment.

Fico ran a divisive and deeply polarising campaign. He continually attacked Čaputová, portraying her as an agent of western interests, to the extent that Čaputová took legal action against him. She also reported receiving death threats. Fico targeted LGBTQI+ people for vilification as well. In a sign of how bad tempered the campaign was, former prime minister Matovič got into a physical confrontation with senior Smer politician Robert Kaliňák.

Applying the populist playbook, Fico pitched his campaign squarely at one segment of the population: socially conservative people, often older and in rural locales. He tapped into antipathy towards migrants, Roma people and LGBTQI+ people. He spoke to pro-Russian sentiments, more present in Slovakia than in most former communist countries, based on the idea of a shared Slavic identity. Among older people, there’s also some nostalgia for the communist era, viewed favourably in contrast to the economic and social turmoil that followed.

Fico’s campaign pledged to end military support to Ukraine, a complete reversal of the outgoing government’s policy of solidarity; the caretaker government has suspended aid since the election. Fico has parroted Russian lines alleging Ukrainian fascism and the need to protect Russians in east Ukraine.

As this suggests, Russian-led conspiracy theories and disinformation flourished in the campaign. Research suggests that around half of Slovakians believe Ukraine or the west provoked Russia into war. Surveys show a widespread lack of trust in political institutions in Slovakia and willingness to believe in conspiracy theories.

Civil society was vilified as part of this intense campaign of disinformation. As in Hungary, civil society organisations that work for human rights, democratic freedoms and the rule of law have been painted as foreign agents serving the interests of western states and conspiracy theory arch-villains such as Hungarian philanthropist George Soros.

Meanwhile there’s a more progressive part of the population – typically younger and more urban and university educated – who identify more with the west than Russia and support causes such as LGBTQI+ rights. Many of them will have voted for Progressive Slovakia, the pro-European socially liberal party that finished second on 32 seats. But the danger is that, even though Fico and Smer only moderately improved on their 2020 showing, a new government will result that won’t represent those voters. A divided public could get a government that wants to keep stoking and benefiting from polarisation rather than healing division.

Fico and Smer have capitalised on disaffection but they’re hardly promising change. On the enduring problem of corruption, for example, there seems little prospect of progress: Fico himself has faced organised crime charges, and several people from his past governments have been convicted of or charged with corruption.

EU in the spotlight

For the EU, a Fico-led government signals problems. Hungary’s strongarm leader Viktor Orbán was quick to welcome the result, and no wonder. The two share much common ground: they’ve both stoked culture wars to appeal to social conservatism, are sympathetic towards Vladimir Putin and are opposed to scrutiny and checks on their power, whether they come from civil society or the EU.

Russia’s war on Ukraine brought cooler relations between Orbán and his fellow right-wing nationalists in Poland, who strongly opposed the war and supported Ukraine, although that stance has shifted in the context of Poland’s imminent election: the ruling party is now voicing animosity towards Ukraine in the wake of anger from farmers undercut by imported Ukrainian grain and trying to head off the challenge of a far-right party. Potentially Slovakia, depending on what coalition forms, and Poland, depending on its election results, could work with Hungary to form a powerful eastern EU belt resisting EU human rights standards and disrupting the consensus on how to respond to Russia’s aggression.

But Slovakia, with a high budget deficit, needs continuing EU funding, giving the EU some leverage to ensure that fundamental rights are upheld. The EU must insist that any funding it provides is met with a strong commitment to keep civic space open and recognise the value of and work with civil society.