(Reuters) – Slovak President Zuzana Caputova will only appoint a cabinet led by pro-Russian former prime minister Robert Fico if he changes his nominee to be environment minister, her office said on Friday.
The decision could mean the process of forming a cabinet extends beyond the middle of next week.
Fico’s leftist, socially conservative SMER-SSD party won the country’s Sept. 30 election with an agenda that included ending military aid to Ukraine, making foreign policy independent of European Union (EU) partners, and criticism of sanctions against Russia.
Fico formed a coalition with the centre-left HLAS (Voice) party and the nationalist, pro-Russian Slovak National Party (SNS) and has said he wanted his cabinet appointed ahead of an EU summit on Oct 26-27.
But the process hit a snag when the liberal Caputova rejected SNS’s nomination of Rudolf Huliak to be environment minister, citing his denial of climate change and verbal attacks on environmental campaigners.
“The president will set the date of the appointment of the new government only upon receiving a new proposal for a candidate for the environment ministry post, so she can appoint the new government in its complete composition,” Caputova’s spokesman said in a statement.
SNS and Fico have refused to change the nomination, and Fico said on Thursday he expected his cabinet would be appointed with the environment portfolio vacant for now.
Caputova also said on Friday that Slovakia’s new parliament will meet for the first time on Oct. 25.
(Reporting by Jan Lopatka and Jason Hovet in Prague; editing by Jason Neely and Barbara Lewis)
