EU leaders have condemned the “cowardly” assassination attempt on the Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico, warning that violence has “no place” in European politics.
Olaf Scholz, the chancellor of Germany, a country which has itself experienced a wave of violent attacks on politicians in the past month, said: “I am deeply shocked by the news of the cowardly attack on Slovakian Prime Minister Fico. Violence must not exist in European politics.”
Speaking just three weeks before elections to the European parliament, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, echoed his message, condemning what she said was a “vile attack” on “both the prime minister and democracy”.
“Such acts of violence have no place in our society and undermine democracy, our most precious common good. My thoughts are with PM Fico and his family,” she said.
The populist leader, 59, was taken to hospital for emergency surgery after being shot outside the House of Culture in the town of Handlová, about 100 miles north-east of the capital, Bratislava, where the leader was meeting with supporters, according to reports on TA3, a Slovakian TV station.
The shooting will heighten tensions going into the elections in June, with attacks on German, Spanish and Irish politicians already casting a shadow over public life. European Commission sources said the attack risked fuelling further violence across the political landscape.
In a statement, the liberal political group Renew said it was “increasingly alarmed by the rising polarisation within our political sphere fuelled by extremist ideologies, both left- and right-wing.”
This “climate of heightened division is laying the groundwork for an environment where acts of violence are more likely to occur, and also wrongly justified by those who seek to disrupt and dominate rather than engage and debate”, it added.
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Josep Borrell, Europe’s chief diplomat, said that Europe was “once again witnessing unacceptable attacks against political representatives”.
In Germany, where assaults on politicians causing physical injury have increased steeply this year, with 22 such incidents recorded so far compared with 27 for all of 2023, Matthias Ecke, a Social Democratic MEP and candidate in Saxony, recently suffered a broken cheekbone and eye socket after being attacked while putting up campaign posters.
A Green party politician was harassed and spat at while putting up posters in Dresden, while a week ago Franziska Giffey, a Berlin state senator and former mayor of the capital, was briefly treated in hospital after being attacked with a bag “filled with hard contents”.
Violence has also marred Spanish politics. Last November, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a co-founder of Spain’s far-right Vox party, was shot in the face in Madrid, leading to the arrests of five people in connection with the case.
In Ireland, the husband and young children of the justice minister, Helen McEntee, were forced to evacuate their home after a bomb scare, while masked people gathered last month outside the home of the integration minister, Roderic O’Gorman, in unprecedented scenes of aggression at the homes of politicians.
