Slovak President Peter Pellegrini has backed the postponement of the new Nato defence spending target of 5% of GDP to 2035.

“If all the members agree on Wednesday [June 25] behind the table with the final declaration, [then] Slovakia won’t be the only country which will block its adoption,” Pellegrini was quoted as saying by state broadcaster STVR, noting that his position has been consulted with the cabinet of populist Prime Minister Robert Fico.

Pellegrini made the comments prior to his departure to the Hague Nato summit, where he will represent Slovakia, and after similar comments from last week, when he stressed Slovakia will seek consensus with other Nato members, and which followed Pellegrini’s talks with Fico’s cabinet and opposition leaders.  

“Slovakia won’t disrupt unity at the summit, and will, of course, look for consensus, which will suit all the 32 member countries,” Pellegrini was quoted as saying by the Slovak press agency TASR, last week.

Ahead of his departure to the Hague, Pellegrini also reiterated that Slovakia will make sovereign decisions, which would reflect the state of its public finances, at the summit.

“Slovakia is not going to agree with mass rearmament tomorrow,” he added, noting that “the Slovak Republic will primarily prefer investments on dual[-use] projects such as the improvement of infrastructure.”

The 5% Nato spending hike has turned into a much-debated topic in the Slovak domestic politics.

While liberal opposition backs the increased spending, Fico’s left-right ruling coalition is dependent on the ultranationalist SNS for its narrow parliamentary majority. SNS opposes the spending hikes and even called into question Slovakia’s Nato membership over the new defence spending rules.

On the other hand, a more moderate ruling coalition party, centre-left Hlas, which Pellegrini chaired until last year before stepping down after his election as the country's president, does not voice opposition to changes in the Nato defence spending policies.

This leaves Fico with ambiguous statements manoeuvring between appealing to its anti-establishment pro-Kremlin electorate, while trying to avoid slipping into further isolation in the EU and Nato.   

In the latest development, Fico issued a statement saying that “at a time of curing the public finances and catching up with the average living standard in the EU, the Slovak Republic has different priorities in the upcoming years than rearmament.”

He added that Slovakia “must ascertain sovereign right to decide at what pace and in what structure” the hike will occur, citing the Spanish example, and that Slovakia “won’t support any increase of investments to purchase weapon systems above the 2025 level,” adding that hikes in 2026 will concern dual use spending only.    

Slovakia’s defence industry is also experiencing an unprecedented boom, fuelled by the commercial ammunition and military materiel exports to Ukraine, which increased under Fico after he axed state military support to Ukraine shortly after the September 2023 elections, which Smer won on an anti-Ukrainian ticket.

The Smer party enjoys long-standing ties to weaponry companies in the country. The party officials, including Minister of Defence and Fico’s close collaborator, Robert Kaliňák, are also facing accusations of ballooning defence spending to Smer-friendly companies controlled by Jaroslav Strnad, founder of the Czechoslovak Group (CSG) regional defence conglomerate. 

In April, the Bratislava-based Ján Kuciak Investigative Centre (ICJK) wrote in its investigation that the US-made Black Hawk choppers ordered by Fico’s government were overpriced by about two-thirds above the original price.

The Slovak Ministry of Defence, under the watch of Kaliňák, ordered the 12 Black Hawks from the American company ACE Aeronautics, controlled by Strnad, last December for close to €150mn.

Following the amendment to the original contract, which was published in the central registry of public contracts (CRZ) on April 4, the overall price for the helicopters reached close to €250mn.