Slovakia's leverage in Brussels now rests on a coalition that lost its majority

Slovakia's parliament removed Deputy Prime Minister and Environment Minister Tomas Taraba on 29 September, and the votes came from inside the government. Reuters reported that the motion carried with 77 votes in the 150-seat chamber after lawmakers of the Slovak National Party (SNS), the junior coalition partner that had nominated Taraba in the first place, sided with the opposition; Prime Minister Robert Fico said an early election could be held as soon as January. That matters beyond Bratislava because almost everything distinctive about Slovakia's position in the EU - a standing demand to delist a sanctioned Russian businessman, a court action against the gas phase-out, a willingness to cut power exports to Ukraine over a pipeline - is exercised through unanimity and litigation, not domestic law. None of it is legislated; all of it depends on who signs for Slovakia in the Council.

The majority that carries the positions

Fico's three-party coalition held 78 of 150 seats, and only with the help of loyal independents, according to Reuters. The crisis began with an SNS demand for Taraba's removal and ended with SNS voting for it alongside the opposition. Fico raised the possibility of a January election but noted it would need a parliamentary supermajority, which he does not have; Reuters also noted that a collapse would not automatically produce elections, because the constitution allows another cabinet to be formed in the same chamber, and that polls suggest the ruling parties would lose power in a vote.

The relevant point is not the arithmetic of survival but the arithmetic of leverage. A veto threat in Brussels is credible in proportion to the threatener's ability to stay in office long enough to lift it on his own terms.

Slovakia's own lever is a name on a list, not an energy exemption

This is where Bratislava's file diverges most clearly from Budapest's. Hungary's campaign has been about exemptions for its own supply. Slovakia's most persistent demand in 2026 has been the removal of Alisher Usmanov from the EU's Russia sanctions list - one Euronews reported Slovakia had been pursuing "for months" before France joined it on 13 September, seeking leverage over French nationals detained in Azerbaijan.

The list is renewed by unanimity every six months, and Euronews put it at some 1,600 entries. With the renewal due to lapse, EU ambassadors rolled the measures over by one week, to 22 September, to keep negotiating. A week later the problem had widened: Luxembourg linked the question to Mikhail Fridman, who is litigating against it over frozen assets, raising the prospect of delistings traded one capital at a time. An EU diplomat quoted by Euronews said the French and Slovak approach "amounted to a veto of a common EU position, reminiscent of tactics employed by Hungary". President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was "definitely not the time to lift sanctions, to rescue Russian oligarchs from them".

Whether a successor government in Bratislava would keep pressing a delisting request that has no energy rationale is a different question from whether it would keep buying Russian gas.

The gas commitments are contractual, and they outlast cabinets

Slovakia's supply exposure is not a matter of annual policy choice. Euronews reported in May 2025 that the Slovak contract for Russian gas runs to 2034, while the EU plan phases out existing contracts by the end of 2027 - a seven-year overhang that no election resolves. Fico called the proposal "absolutely unacceptable" and said Slovakia would seek damages if it proceeded.

He followed through in court. Reuters reported on 17 April 2026 that Slovakia would file suit against the import ban at the EU Court of Justice before a 27 April deadline, with Fico arguing that the measure was in substance a sanction and therefore required unanimity: "This is a clear violation of all the principles on which the EU treaties are based." Hungary had already filed its own action. The Slovak case register number is not established in the sources reviewed here. Whether the suit is pressed or withdrawn falls to whichever cabinet is in office when it is heard.

Oil, and the lever that points at Kyiv

Slovak crude exposure produced the year's sharpest bilateral rupture. After Druzhba flows stopped in late January 2026 following a Russian strike on infrastructure in Ukraine, Fico accused Kyiv of "a purely political decision aimed at blackmailing Slovakia over its international positions on the war in Ukraine", and on 23 February ended emergency electricity help: "As of today, if the Ukrainian side turns to Slovakia with a request for assistance in stabilising the Ukrainian energy grid, such assistance will not be provided." He put the cost of the earlier loss of Russian gas transit at "damages of 500 million [euros] per year", per Al Jazeera.

The threat had weight because of the grid, not the pipeline. Al Jazeera, citing the Kyiv consultancy ExPro, said Hungary and Slovakia together supplied 68 per cent of Ukraine's imported electricity that month; the Kyiv Independent put Slovakia's own share at roughly 17 per cent. Ukraine's foreign ministry replied that "ultimatums should be sent to the Kremlin, and certainly not to Kyiv". Fico's framing, as Euronews recorded in February, was that Slovak imports of Russian energy are a contractual right rather than a policy preference.

The argument built to outlast the cabinet

By late September the government's public case had shifted from sanctions to prices. Reuters reported on 22 September that Fico demanded an emergency EU summit on fuel costs, saying that expecting member states to absorb "astronomical prices of fuels at the expense of pensions or healthcare is a display not just of the EU's incompetence, but above all the EU's cynicism". Slovakia said it would prepare its own price measures. That is an argument built to survive a change of government, which may be the point.

What to watch

• Whether parliament musters the supermajority for a January election, or a new cabinet is assembled inside the present chamber.
• Whether the Usmanov delisting demand survives the coalition crisis, and whether the renewal rolled over to 22 September was closed without delistings.
• Whether Slovakia presses or withdraws its Court of Justice action against the gas phase-out regulation.
• Whether any Slovak government attaches a date to replacing the gas contract that runs to 2034, against the EU's end-2027 cut-off.

Hungary's Russian-energy story is now about an exit date. Slovakia's is about whether the obstruction still has an owner in January, and about a supply contract that outruns the EU deadline by seven years regardless of who wins.

Sources

• Reuters (via Internazionale) - Slovak coalition frays with minister's removal, early election mooted
• Reuters (via Euronext) - Slovak leader Fico raps EU for inaction on fuel prices, demands summit
• Reuters (via EnergyNow) - Slovakia to file lawsuit over EU's Russian gas ban, PM says
• Euronews - France seeks Usmanov delisting to free French nationals in Azerbaijan
• Euronews - EU sanction deadlock deepens as Luxembourg complicates the picture
• Euronews - Slovakia's prime minister rejects EU plan to halt Russian gas imports by end of 2027
• Euronews - Zelenskyy invites Slovakia's Robert Fico to Ukraine amid Druzhba pipeline standoff
• Al Jazeera - Slovakia halts emergency power supplies to Ukraine over Russian oil dispute
• Kyiv Independent - Ukraine condemns Hungarian, Slovak 'ultimatums' amid energy dispute