Robert Fico is a Slovak politician who has served several times as Prime Min-ister of Slovakia and is the long-time leader of the party Direction – Social Democracy (Smer-SD, currently: Smer-SSD). He founded this party in 1999 and became Prime Minister for the first time in 2006. He subsequently headed the Slovak government in three periods: 2006–2010, 2012–2018, and again from 2023. His political agenda has combined elements of social democracy with a strong emphasis on state intervention, social welfare policies, and national sovereignty.

Fico has been one of the most influential figures in Slovak politics since the mid-2000s and has played an important role in shaping the country’s domestic and foreign policy debates within the European Union and NATO.The foreign policy of Robert Fico’s fourth government (2023–2025) remains a relatively underexplored subject of research within the context of contempo-rary international relations in Central Europe. Fico’s return to power in 2023 marked a departure from the unequivocally pro-Atlantic and pro-Ukrainian orientation of previous cabinets, in favour of a more ambivalent stance to-ward the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, as well as a more assertive approach to relations with the institutions of the European Union.

The government has undertaken initiatives that may be interpreted both as an attempt to enhance Slovakia’s decision-making sovereignty and as part of the broader rise of Eu-rosceptic and pro-Russian currents in the region.The purpose of this study is to analyse the determinants and main direc-tions of the foreign policy of Robert Fico’s fourth government, with particular emphasis on its relations with Euro-Atlantic structures, its approach to the Russian-Ukrainian war, openness to the countries of the Global South, and its engagement with the Visegrád Group.

The study also aims to assess the impact of this policy on Slovakia’s international standing and on the formation of its image as a partner within the European Union and NATO. The time frame of the main analysis covers the years 2023–2025, that is, the period from the par-liamentary elections in the autumn of 2023 to the end of 2025, which marks the midpoint of the current coalition’s term in office. At the same time, the pre-vious governments involving Robert Fico after 2006 were also characterised.