Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico has announced that he will meet French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Thursday, 29 January 2026, saying the “agenda will be huge.” The announcement came shortly after his return from trips to Brussels and Paris and immediately helped trigger a wave of speculation in Slovak politics about the real purpose of the visit. Andrej Danko, leader of the coalition partner SNS, publicly suggested that Fico is going to see Macron because he was “frightened” by his recent meeting with Donald Trump—though he did not explain what, specifically, the prime minister was supposed to have been scared by. Fico revealed his plan to meet Macron in a social-media video summarising his foreign travel, framing the upcoming talks as wide-ranging and substantive. The timing is also notable because relations between Europe and Washington have become more tense, and Macron has recently been among the European leaders responding most sharply to U.S. pressure, stressing that Europe cannot give in to intimidation.

At the centre of the political chatter is Fico’s mid-January trip to Florida, where he met Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Slovak media pointed out that details about the encounter emerged only after Fico returned home, with no extensive live coverage at the time. According to Slovak accounts, the conversation touched on the war in Ukraine, the European Union, and broader international issues. Fico emphasised that Slovakia does not want to “parrot Brussels,” and reports highlighted that the two politicians shared the view that the EU is in a “deep crisis,” particularly in terms of competitiveness. The Florida visit also coincided with a significant step in Slovak–American cooperation on nuclear energy: the signing of an intergovernmental agreement on civil nuclear cooperation, presented as part of strengthening energy security and reducing dependence on Russian solutions. That nuclear angle has become a key piece of the domestic dispute, with Danko criticising the process as rushed and suggesting that if building with Russia is not an option, then Slovakia should all the more explore a European path—implicitly including France, which is widely seen as a heavyweight in nuclear energy.

Why Macron, and why now? The planned meeting can be read on several levels: as a signal to the EU that Bratislava is engaging directly with one of the bloc’s core leaders; as a way to broaden Slovakia’s options in energy and security policy at a time when U.S.–Europe frictions are rising; and as part of a balancing act in which Fico tries to keep room for manoeuvre between Brussels and Washington. The “fear” narrative pushed by Danko may be primarily political, but it also highlights tensions within the governing coalition—suggesting that some partners want greater influence over Slovakia’s foreign-policy direction and over the risks that come with an unpredictable relationship with Trump.