President will appoint Fico cabinet on Wednesday.

The Slovak National Party (SNS) has withdrawn elected ultranationalist lawmaker and hunter Rudolf Huliak (NK/SNS) as its candidate for the environment minister following the president's reservations from last week.

On Tuesday, the party announced that it nominated the ultranationalist elected lawmaker TomaA! Taraba (A1/2ivot/SNS) instead.

After Smer chair Robert Fico, the future prime minister, presented his complete list of future ministers to President Zuzana Caputova, she announced that she would appoint the new government, and Fico's fourth cabinet, during the first parliamentary session in the new term on Wednesday afternoon.

Taraba's goal

President Zuzana Caputova did not consider Huliak the right person for the ministerial job as he questions Slovakia's environmental policy, denies climate change and threatens conservationists.

'We managed to put our egos aside,' Huliak said on Tuesday.

Had the SNS insisted on Huliak, Fico's new cabinet would probably not have been appointed this week. Fico made it public after the election that he would like to attend the European summit in Brussels at the end of October as Slovakia's prime minister. Migration and Ukraine are expected to be two of the main topics, topics on which Fico will hold opposite views to most European leaders. Following the SNS's concession, SNS leader Andrej Danko expects favours from Fico in return - more money for the ministries in the SNS portfolio.

Taraba, who joined the parliament for the first time in 2020 on the slate of the far-right party LSNS, is regarded as a politician who aims to weaken...