Slovakia now has a Hungarian Prime Minister

Slovak head of state Zuzana Caputová appointed on Monday her cabinet of experts, headed by Lajos Ódor, who took office shortly afterwards from outgoing acting prime minister Eduard Heger.

Following his appointment, Lajos Ódor said his cabinet would bring calm and expertise.

“Our common ambition is to bring calm, stability, tolerance and, last but not least, civilised discourse. To show that it can be done differently,”

Lajos Ódor was quoted as saying by the Slovak public news agency TASR.

During the appointment ceremony, Zuzana Caputová said she expects the cabinet to deliver the best and most pragmatic performance possible, but also to be a counterweight to populism and lies.

Lajos Ódor has previously served as vice president of the National Bank of Slovakia (NBS). Born in Révkomárom (Komárno), the 46-year-old economist has been a visiting professor at the Central European University (CEU) since 2016.

In addition to the prime minister, the finance minister will also be Hungarian, with Mihály Horváth, chief economist at the Central Bank of Slovakia, taking up the portfolio. The foreign affairs portfolio will be held by Miroslav Wlachovsky, who previously served as a diplomat in Washington and was Slovakia’s ambassador to London. The defence portfolio will be headed by Martin Sklenár, who has previously worked in the ministries of defence and foreign affairs, and previously served as Slovakia’s permanent representative in Brussels and Slovakian embassy in Washington. The Ministry of the Interior will be headed by Ivan Samko, who previously held this post in one of Mikuláš Dzurinda’s governments and also headed the Ministry of Defence.

In Slovakia, the president appointed a cabinet of experts after acting head of government Eduard Heger asked the president for his dismissal a week ago, after two of his cabinet ministers – the foreign and agriculture ministers – announced their intention to leave. Eduard Heger had been acting head of government since December, after his government was defeated in a parliamentary no-confidence vote against him last year by Liberals who had left the former coalition government.

The caretaker government is expected to serve until early parliamentary elections scheduled for September. The appointment of the new cabinet has previously been criticised by several political parties, including the main opposition force, the pro-independence Social Democrats (Smer-SD), led by Robert Fico, who usually leads the polls.