The Slovak parliament dismissed Minister of Environment Tomáš Taraba, a nominee of the ultranationalist Slovak National Party (SNS), after SNS legislators joined opposition ranks in a vote of confidence motion against Taraba on the evening of September 29.

Taraba’s ejection by the parliament could come as a blow to populist Prime Minister Robert Fico who earlier withdrew his backing for the SNS' push to dismiss Taraba from the cabinet.

Fico summoned his Smer party in response to the vote, posting on his Facebook profile a short statement: “what the SNS did today forces the Smer party to summon party leadership for 17:00 tomorrow [September 30] to decide on the next move”.

It is one of the most serious crises of Fico’s left-right ruling coalition, which also includes conservative centre-left Hlas, since it was formed in 2023, marking Fico’s return to power as a Kremlin-friendly national conservative.

Since then, Fico has faced numerous occasions when his ruling coalition appeared to have lost its narrow majority in the parliament of 150 amid internal jostling over public posts. However, he always managed to stitch it back together, including with cabinet reshuffles, as part of which he handed cabinet seats to rebellious legislators.

The weekend before the confidence vote on Taraba, Fico gambled by saying he was ready to call snap elections for January to put more pressure on the SNS, which sits well below the parliamentary 5% threshold in the polls, and keep the influential Taraba as minister. 

“This situation can be solved only the standard constitutional way and that is early elections,” Fico said during political programme V politike (In Politics) aired by commercial television station TA3 in reference to the spat between SNS leader Andrej Danko and Taraba, whom Danko accused of not representing SNS interests.

Overall 77 legislators backed the motion against Taraba, two more than required to eject him, while  MPs of Smer and Hlas, and several other Fico-aligned legislators walked out of the parliamentary session.

“We have dismissed Minister Taraba. Early elections must follow!” Michal Šimečka, leader of the largest opposition party, centrist Progressive Slovakia (PS), stated shortly after the vote.

Earlier, Šimečka also welcomed Fico’s comments about early elections saying: “let’s do this, let’s have early elections. It is the easiest solution for Slovakia”.

The latest poll by Ipsos agency compiled for daily DenníkN and published on September 24 shows that Smer (16.9%) trails narrowly behind PS (19%), while Hlas dropped to 6.6% and SNS sank to 2.2%.

In what could be intended to put more pressure on SNS and other parties, Fico also said he is open to cooperation with the neofascist non-parliamentary Republika, widely seen as politically toxic, which surged in the Ipsos poll to third with 12.8%.

Opposition parties populist rightwing Slovakia (10.7%), neoliberal SaS (8.4%) and Christian democratic KDH (7%) would re-enter the parliament, according to Ipsos, as would the non-parliamentary liberal rightwing Democrats (5.5%).

The SNS wants state secretary of the environment portfolio Filip Kuffa to succeed Taraba, who described the situation as “bizarre”, but Slovakia's president, and Fico ally Peter Pellegrini, was reluctant to appoint the controversial Kuffa, who made national headlines with his attacks on journalists in the past.

Kuffa himself reportedly said Fico was trying to discourage him from taking up the post, potentially due to the PM’s concerns about more bad publicity hitting his cabinet before the national elections.