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Soriek  6mo ago (text post)   950 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 23

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum might be interested in. I’m increasingly doing more coverage of countries we’re likely to have a userbase living in, or just that I think our userbase would be more interested in. This does mean going a little outside of my comfort zone and I’ll probably make mistakes, so chime in where you see any. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Slovakia

Resurgent populist Robert Fico has now successfully completed an agreement to form a government:

Fico's leftist, populist SMER-SSD (Direction-Slovak Social Democracy) struck a deal last week with the centre-left HLAS (Voice) and nationalist Slovak National Party (SNS) to form a coalition that will have 79 out of 150 seats in parliament.

Monday's pact, which can allow the president to appoint the new government, agreed the breakdown of cabinet positions, giving SMER the defence, finance, foreign and justice ministries….

HLAS, whose presence could blunt any hard policy shifts in the proposed government, will get parliament's speaker role.

Slovakia, a European Union and NATO member, is on course for the highest deficit in the euro zone this year as a result of slower economic growth, higher spending needs and rising costs, with the shortfall seen at more than twice the bloc's ceiling of 3% of gross domestic product.

Fico said he wanted to prevent budget tightening from hurting social standards and to allow space for investments, signalling slower pace of fiscal consolidation than what the outgoing caretaker government has recommended…

Fico said his priorities would include boosting living standards and a foreign policy consistent with Slovakia's EU and NATO membership - but focused on protecting national interests.

He told reporters that what he called the era of non-governmental groups running the country was over.

The largest change for Slovakia’s allies will be reduced support for the Ukrainian War. Slovakia was never a major contributor but does mark the first of the western alliance wearying of support and also comes at a time when America’s own aid to Ukraine looks up in the air.

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