Leader of the junior ruling coalition party, the ultranationalist Slovak National Party (SNS), Andrej Danko, has stirred up a new row inside populist Prime Minister Robert Fico's left-right coalition after he said he is open to discussing leaving Nato.

“Let’s talk about how much neutrality costs and let’s talk about whether it makes sense to be Nato members,“ Danko was quoted as saying by state broadcaster STVR and other media in the country following the weekend SNS party summit.

Danko made the comments in response to Fico's earlier provocative statement that “neutrality would suit Slovakia … like Austria and Switzerland,” adding that “Nato is like a golf club” where “to play you have to pay a member fee” which “the USA decided to raise to 5% of GDP,” and that such a move is irrational given the state of public finances in Slovakia. 

Slovakia is poised to back the 5% of GDP Nato spending hike on defence, after President Peter Pellegrini said that “Slovakia won’t disrupt unity at the [Hague Nato] summit, and will, of course, look for consensus, which will suit all the 32 member countries.”

Danko, however, seized the opportunity offered by Fico’s statements and pushed further with the anti-Nato rhetoric in an apparent effort to boost SNS’ faltering popularity in the radical anti-establishment electoral waters.

“Let’s go further. Let’s talk about how much neutrality would cost, and I am curious whether our coalition partners would back down,” Danko also said.

He added that “I am not afraid to say that if we are to be blackmailed by Nato member states to invest in arming, then we will be facing a decision whether to leave Nato, or invest insane money into arming.”

“One thing is a splash, and another a word of man, so let’s do it, Mr. Fico,” Danko said in a clear challenge to Fico, whose Smer party is eating away chunks of the SNS electorate after Fico stepped up his pro-Kremlin rhetoric following his return to power in 2023.  

Danko’s words also prompted a response from the leader of the remaining ruling coalition party, more moderate Hlas, Matúš Šutaj Eštok, who reiterated that Hlas would leave the government if Slovakia’s EU and Nato memberships were questioned.

Šutaj Eštok also said “we realise that defence needs investments, but was also need bridges and hospitals.”

According to the May Globsec Trends 2025 survey by the Bratislava-based security think tank Globsec, more than 70% of Slovaks back their country’s Nato membership, 63% think Slovakia should be increasing defence spending, while at the same time only 49% of Slovaks would be willing to defend their country if attacked by another state.

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 Fico’s close ally from their Smer party, Robert Kalinak, 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.