Robert Fico

Biography

Robert Fico was born in Topoľčany, Czechoslovakia, in 1964. He studied law at Comenius University in Bratislava, graduating in 1986, did military service as an assistant investigator, and worked at the Institute of State and Law of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and at the justice ministry until 1992, writing a doctoral thesis on the death penalty in Czechoslovakia. He joined the Communist Party in 1986 and after 1989 its successor, the Party of the Democratic Left.

Elected to parliament in 1992, he left the Democratic Left in 1999 and founded Direction (Smer), which he has led ever since and which absorbed most of the Slovak left by 2004. Smer won the 2006 election and Fico formed a coalition with the Slovak National Party and Mečiar's HZDS; his first government took Slovakia into the Schengen area in 2007 and the eurozone in 2009.

After a spell in opposition from 2010, he won an outright majority in 2012, lost the 2014 presidential election to Andrej Kiska, and took a hard line against EU migrant quotas before winning again in 2016. The murder of journalist Ján Kuciak in February 2018 set off mass protests, and he resigned in March 2018.

Fico returned to power after the 2023 election on a more populist, Russia-friendly platform. On 15 May 2024 he was shot and seriously wounded in Handlová; his attacker was later sentenced to 21 years. His fourth government has faced large protests over his policies toward Russia and Ukraine.