The race to reach the parliamentary threshold promises to be as nerve-wracking as the race for first place.

In the autumn of 2023 Slovaks will elect a new parliament in an early election. Since March 2023, Smer, the party of former Prime Minister Robert Fico, has been leading opinion polls and is expected to win the election. What would Fico’s return mean for Slovakia, the region and the rest of Europe?

There was a time when you almost never heard talk of emigration in Slovakia. Just before the pandemic hit, discussion about the big return of Slovaks who had left in the 1990s was still the topic of the day. Not in the summer of 2023. Nowadays, people buying flight tickets for their foreign holidays would more often than not utter the running joke that perhaps they should only take the one-way fare.