Richard Golian

1995-born. Charles University alum. Head of Performance at Mixit. 10+ years in marketing and data.

Castellano Français Slovenčina

Manage subscription Choose a plan

RSS
Newsletter
New articles to your inbox

Article

Political situation in Slovakia

Political parties in Slovakia
Richard Golian
Richard Golian · 3 227 reads
Hi, I am Richard. On this blog, I share thoughts, personal stories, findings and what I am working on. I hope this article brings you some value.

What are the main political forces in Slovakia today? And how are they connected? Here is a quick overview.

Parliamentary parties after the 2023 election

The current Slovak parliament is shaped by two main groups, with several extra-parliamentary parties remaining active outside parliament.

1. Government coalition

  • The government is made up of SMER-SD (Smer – sociálna demokracia), HLAS-SD (Hlas – sociálna demokracia), and SNS (Slovenská národná strana).
    • SMER-SD (Smer – sociálna demokracia), led by Robert Fico, mixes conservative, nationalist values with socialist-style economic rhetoric and sharp criticism of the West.
    • HLAS-SD (Hlas – sociálna demokracia), led by Peter Pellegrini (a former ally of Fico), presents itself as a more moderate, centrist alternative, though it now cooperates with SMER.
    • SNS (Slovenská národná strana) is a traditional nationalist party, strongly focused on patriotism and conservative issues.
    Together, these three parties form a coalition that leans national-conservative with strong state-intervention tendencies.

2. Democratic opposition

  • The opposition is a mix of liberal, progressive, and centre-right forces:
    • Progressive Slovakia (Progresívne Slovensko): A liberal, pro-European party, similar to En Marche! in France.
    • Freedom and Solidarity (Sloboda a Solidarita – SaS): A liberal, economically right-leaning party.
    • Christian Democratic Movement (Kresťanskodemokratické hnutie – KDH): A classic Christian-democratic party.
    • Slovakia (Slovensko): Formerly known as OĽaNO, an anti-corruption movement led by Igor Matovič, now repositioned under a broader brand but still marked by populism and conservatism.
    These parties generally support stronger EU ties and democratic reforms, though they differ widely in style and priorities.

Extra-parliamentary forces

  • Several former parliamentary parties failed to cross the threshold in the 2023 election:
    • Republic (Republika): A far-right nationalist party, founded by former members of ĽSNS.
    • Hungarian Alliance (Maďarská aliancia): A party representing the Hungarian minority, aiming for regional development and minority rights.
    • Democrats (Demokrati): A centrist, pro-European party formed from former members of centre-right movements, advocating for reforms and moderation.
    • We Are Family (Sme rodina): A populist party focused on social benefits and family support.
    These parties currently operate outside parliament but remain active and influential in public discourse, although fragmented and lacking a unified platform.

The bigger picture

Slovak politics today are even more fragmented than a few years ago. The traditional left-right division is almost irrelevant. New liberal forces are gaining ground. Nationalism and populism remain strong players, even outside parliament.

The country is deeply polarized between two visions: one that looks westward toward the EU and liberal democracy, and another that leans inward, focusing on national sovereignty and conservative values.

Continue

Continue reading for free

Enter your email to keep reading for free. This also subscribes you to my monthly newsletter. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Sources

Summary

Slovakia after the 2023 election: a national-conservative coalition versus liberal-progressive opposition. The country is more fragmented than ever, deeply polarized between westward-looking EU supporters and those prioritising national sovereignty. Understanding this landscape requires accepting its complexity.
Richard Golian

If you have any thoughts, questions, or feedback, feel free to drop me a message at mail@richardgolian.com.

More articles

I Ran Object Detection on My Laptop, and Saw Everything Is Possible

A few weeks ago I installed a small local AI model on my laptop that watches a live camera feed. I turned the webcam on in the dark, and in near total darkness it recognised me and the objects in the room. That such things exist, I have known for a long time. What opened my eyes was the accessibility. I installed it in one prompt, free, and it runs entirely on my machine, sending data nowhere.

15 July 2026·84 reads
Dependent on AI: Are We Still Masters, or Slaves?

I have Heidegger and my notebook beside me. I am asking where all of this is heading, where artificial intelligence is taking us.

21 June 2026·550 reads
Which Work Will AI Not Replace?

Seventy per cent. That is where the first AI output begins, even when you give it the full company context and the best examples from the past. We are talking about the kind of output that cannot be defined programmatically. It is more complex. Often it is creative work. On one repeated type of output I reached eighty per cent within a week. Every further percentage point is harder than the one before.

10 June 2026·521 reads
What is the dead internet theory? Will we return offline?

For a long time we treated the internet as the main road. The place where work and relationships happen. Yet most of what we see on it today is, or soon will be, AI-generated: text, images, profiles and comments. The internet is turning into an online game full of bots, where you cannot be sure that a human is on the other side of anything. So I ask: was the online world the main road, or only a temporary detour that part of us will return from, back offline?

7 June 2026·665 reads
The Gap Between Professionals in the AI Era

A few days ago I interviewed a senior marketer. An experienced man, years of practice. I asked him about AI. He said he barely uses it. He had one bad experience with the output and decided he was too senior for it to add value when it is not perfect. I know the other side too: professionals who automate everything that can be automated.

6 June 2026·627 reads
Europe Is Not Ready for Drone Warfare

Europe does not have the capacity to face a full-scale, mass drone war of the kind we see in Ukraine. Three dependencies weaken it: China supplies the physical material for defence systems, the United States supplies capabilities Europe does not have, and twenty-seven states cannot agree how fast, or who pays. Rearmament plans exist, but they are being carried out slowly.

31 May 2026·591 reads
Can AI Replace Human Judgement?

AI produces the graphic, the newsletter and the product page faster than a person. What is left for the one who used to do it is the judgement, knowing whether the output is good. But most people have worse judgement than AI. And whoever cannot judge quality cannot delegate either. How do you tell whether yours is the judgement a company relies on, or the kind it can replace?

30 May 2026·594 reads
What Determines a Stock Price?

In April, in the first part of this series, I wrote about an AI prediction system I had started building on my own machine. At the time the software was a few hours old and the prediction record was empty. The record since then has shown one thing: the system does not yet understand the market it is being asked to forecast. It can pull macro context, book value, earnings. But it cannot put those together into something that helps it understand the price.

23 May 2026·625 reads
Where the Money Goes When AI Takes the Work: Mapping the AI Economy

Prague, 13 May 2026. On my way to work I started thinking about something that stayed with me for days. If most routine work on a computer disappears in the next ten years, and a large share of repetitive manual work disappears with it, what happens to the flow of money? Who pays whom for what? Which economic layers will exist, how large will they be, and what relationships will run between them? This is the six-layer map I sketched as an answer.

15 May 2026·1 253 reads
Can AI Predict the Stock Market? Building a Calibrated System

I am building an AI system to predict the S&P 500. It runs on my own machine, uses free public data (yfinance, FRED, the Shiller dataset), and grades every forecast against reality. This series documents the build itself: the decisions, the methodology, the mistakes. What I will eventually share from the running system is a separate question, and an honest one.

26 April 2026·2 002 reads
All in on AI agents, or an analogue life.

Four days in Catalonia. No computer, no AI, almost no social media. I bought this notebook so that I could write down what I would think about, and what I would come across and learn on the trip.

10.5.2026·1 099 reads
NEWSLETTER
What I write about, what I am working on, what I learned.
Sent the first Sunday of the month. Unsubscribe anytime.