page_title: Robert Fico
section_title: Hungary
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Fico / Foreign policy / Hungary
caption_attribution_description: English: Meeting of V4 countries - Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Germany and France.
context_page_description: Robert Fico is a Slovak politician who served as Prime Minister of Slovakia from 2012 until his resignation in 2018. Fico also previously served as a Prime Minister from 4 July 2006 to 8 July 2010. He has been the leader of the Direction – Social Democracy party since 1999. First elected to Parliament in 1992, he was later appointed to the Council of Europe. Following his party's victory in the 2006 parliamentary election, he formed the first Fico Cabinet.
  After the 2010 parliamentary election, Fico sat as an opposition member of parliament, effectively as leader of the opposition. Following a motion of confidence against the Iveta Radičová cabinet, Fico was re-appointed as Prime Minister after leading SMER-SD to a landslide election victory in the 2012 parliamentary election, winning 83 seats and forming a government with an absolute majority in Parliament, the first such since 1989. In 2013, Fico officially declared his candidacy for the 2014 presidential election. Fico lost the election to his political rival Andrej Kiska in the second round of voting on 29 March 2014.
context_section_description: Tension between Slovakia and Hungary, unstable from the past, was inflamed in 2006 following the parliamentary election and Fico's decision to include nationalist Ján Slota and his Slovak National Party into his governing coalition. Slota was known for his fierce anti-Hungarian rhetoric, including that "Hungarians are a tumor on the Slovak nation that needs to be immediately removed." In the wake of the election several incidents occurred which further inflamed nationalist sentiment on both sides, including the alleged beating of a Hungarian woman in South Slovakia. Fico reacted by condemning the extremism, but rebuked the Hungarian government by declaring "The Slovak government doesn’t need to be called on to strike against extremism."  The row heated up again in September 2007, when Fico's government introduced a law making the Beneš decrees inviolable. This was in response to demands from ethnic Hungarian politicians that compensations should be made to persons affected by the decrees.
  In May 2008, Fico labelled Hungary a potential threat during a speech commemorating the 161st anniversary of the day that Slovaks demanded national equality with other nations within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Fico used the anniversary to openly criticise the political situation in Hungary and warn about the influence it might have on Slovakia. Especially he warned against the Hungarian right-wing politician Viktor Orbán, and his party Fidesz, which he called an "extreme nationalist party." Since then, however, relations between the two countries have slightly improved.
caption: Press conference following the meeting of leaders of Visegrád Group, Germany and France, 6 March 2013
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