The politics of differentiated integration : what do governments want? Country report : Slovakia

The results show a relatively low salience of DI before 2017 that relates rather to concrete instances than to conceptual understanding of the DI itself. ESM turned out to be the most problematic and most salient instance as it played crucial role in the government fall in 2012. In general, the DI debate appeared mainly in the parliament, and some references to fragmentation trends in the EU were made during the 2016 Slovak presidency and the Future of Europe debate. For Slovakia, one-speed Europe was the preferred model, however, if the EU would decide on a differentiated integration, Slovakia should belong to ‘core EU’. Here, the model of enhanced cooperation was supported as well, especially when it comes to PESCO, European Public Prosecutor and the Financial Transaction Tax. The position of Slovakia may not be understood in terms of the rational evaluation of the policies, but rather in terms of the fear of being identified as second-class citizens. That is also supported by the fact that Slovakia does not have any opt-outs. From 2018, after the resignation of Robert Fico, the ‘core EU’ debate lost its momentum.This report is part of the InDivEU project which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains