Juraj Blanár

Juraj Blanár (born 19 May 1966 in Žilina) is a Slovak politician who has served as minister of foreign and European affairs since 25 October 2023. President Zuzana Čaputová appointed him that day with the rest of Prime Minister Robert Fico's fourth cabinet. He was still listed in that office on the Government Office's roster of ministers and in the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency world-leaders directory updated on 25 February 2026. OpenSanctions records his political association as Direction – Social Democracy.

Before the ministry he sat in the National Council in the third and the fifth through eighth electoral terms, from 2002 to 2023, and was a vice-chairman of the chamber from October 2020. The foreign ministry's biography dates his three terms as president of the Žilina Region to 2006–2017. He trained as a civil engineer at the University of Transport and Communications in Žilina, graduating in 1991 in the reconstruction and maintenance of transport structures, then worked as a maintenance technician, as an assistant in the university's department of geotechnics, and at the Žilina firm Váhostav from 1994 to 2001. Study stays took him to Aalborg University in Denmark in 1993–1994 and, in 1996, to Aston University, the University of Birmingham and the firm WS Atkins in England. The same biography lists English among his languages.

The cabinet he joined ended Slovakia's shipments of weapons from army stocks to Ukraine. On 8 November 2023 it rejected a caretaker plan to send 140 KUB air-defence rockets, more than 5,000 rounds of 125 mm cannon ammunition and 4 million rounds of small-arms ammunition, after 13 earlier packages worth about €671 million that had included an S-300 system and MiG-29 jets. Fico had campaigned on stopping that military aid and pressing for talks, while saying private defence contracts could continue.

As minister, Blanár has met Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, including on the sidelines of the OSCE ministerial meeting in Malta on 5 December 2024. On 29 June 2025, on the Slovak public broadcaster STVR, he said Russia's invasion could not be ended by force, called for a return to international law and for communication with Moscow, and added that the West might "perhaps even forgive everything that has happened." Ukrainian foreign minister Andriy Sybiha answered that it was naive to expect a crime to stop if it was forgiven rather than punished, and that "those who have lost no one in this war have no right to make such statements." The European Union's 18th sanctions package on Russia had been blocked the previous week by Slovakia and Hungary, which cited their reliance on Russian energy.

Early life and education

Juraj Blanár was born on 19 May 1966 in Žilina, then a city in Czechoslovakia and now in Slovakia. The National Council of the Slovak Republic records the same date of birth, lists his nationality as Slovak and his residence as Žilina, and gives him the title Ing. Neither that parliamentary entry nor the biographical notes published by SME and by the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs name his parents or a primary or secondary school.

His documented higher education is in Žilina. In 1991 he completed the programme Reconstruction and Maintenance of Transport Structures at the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the University of Transport and Communications in Žilina (Vysoká škola dopravy a spojov), the name the school then used. The institution dates from 1 September 1953, when a railway college with five faculties, including civil engineering, was separated from the Czech Technical University in Prague. Renamed the University of Transport in 1959, it was moved from Prague to Žilina on 6 September 1960, and in 1980 it became the University of Transport and Communications in Žilina. The civil-engineering faculty was merged in 1961 into the Faculty of Transport Operation and Economics and was restored as a separate faculty only in 1990, the year before Blanár graduated, with Hynek Šertler as dean. The faculty's teaching tradition was in transport structures, bridges, foundations and road building, the field named in his degree programme. From 1993 to 1999, under dean Ján Benčat, departments that had been scattered in outside workplaces were brought together at a faculty seat on Komenského Street 52. In 1996, under Act No. 324/1996, the university was renamed the University of Žilina.

The ministry's curriculum vitae lists him from 1991 to 1994 as an internal aspirant (interný ašpirant) and assistant in that university's Department of Geotechnics, a geotechnical engineering unit, and it does not record any academic degree beyond the 1991 engineering qualification. During those years, in 1993–1994, he held a study stay at Aalborg University in Denmark. In 1996 he had a further study stay in England, at Aston University, the University of Birmingham and the engineering consultancy WS Atkins in Huntingdon. The published biography names the institutions and the years but does not describe the syllabus, any certificate, or a host department. It lists English as his foreign language and records membership of the Slovakia–UK Alumni Association, attached to the British Embassy and the British Council in Bratislava.

The same official biography is the main public source for sport in his youth. It describes him as a champion of Slovakia and as both a champion and a vice-champion of Czechoslovakia in athletics, in the pupil (žiacka) and youth (dorastenecká) categories. It does not name a club, an event, a distance or a year.

Engineering and construction career

Blanár's recorded work before elected office was in civil engineering in Žilina. The biography published by the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs states that in 1991 he finished the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the University of Transport and Communications in Žilina (Vysoká škola dopravy a spojov), in the programme Reconstruction and Maintenance of Transport Structures, and took the title of engineer (Ing.). That faculty, later part of the University of Žilina, had been restored as a separate faculty in 1990, after civil-engineering teaching in the city had for decades sat inside a broader transport faculty. The same ministry biography, and a profile on Aktuality.sk, give him the Ing. title and do not list a further research degree.

In 1991 he worked as a maintenance technician at Žilinské komunikácie, s.r.o., in Žilina. The company that still uses the name says it was formed in 1993 by transforming a municipal budgetary organisation, Žilinské komunikácie, and that its work is summer and winter maintenance of local roads together with construction, reconstruction and repair of transport structures and traffic signs. From 1991 to 1994 the ministry lists him as an internal aspirant and assistant in the university's Department of Geotechnics, the post beginning in the same year as the maintenance job. The department's published profile describes its teaching as geotechnical engineering for transport and environmental works, including geology, soil mechanics, foundations and underground structures. During the university appointment he spent 1993–1994 on a study stay at Aalborg University in Denmark.

From 1994 to 2001 he was employed at Váhostav, a.s., in Žilina. Aktuality.sk's profile describes that employment as head of the testing centre and head of the unit for technical development and the testing centre. In the mid-1990s, as Slovakia expanded its motorway programme, The Slovak Spectator reported that Váhostav was moving from dams and other waterworks toward roads, bridges and tunnels, including freeway sections around Žilina and a share, in a joint venture, of the Branisko tunnel, then being built as the country's first motorway tunnel. The biographies place him in testing and technical development and do not name him as the manager of a particular motorway or tunnel contract.

In 1996, while at Váhostav, he held a study stay in England at Aston University, the University of Birmingham, and the consultancy WS Atkins at Huntingdon. The ministry biography also records membership of the Slovakia–UK Alumni Association, linked there to the British Embassy and the British Council in Bratislava, and of the Slovak national groups of the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association and the International Federation for Structural Concrete.

Parliamentary career

Terms and committee roles

Juraj Blanár first sat in the National Council of Slovakia after the 2002 Slovak parliamentary election, on the list of Smer, the party later reconstituted as Direction – Social Democracy (Smer-SD). The Statistical Office recorded him 23rd on that list and still 23rd after preferential votes, with 3,616 preferences, 0.934 percent of Smer's 387,100 valid votes. Twenty-five Smer candidates were returned, so the place carried a seat. An October 2002 parliamentary paper placed him on the Committee for the Environment and Nature Protection. On 24 August 2004, after Slovakia had entered the European Union, the chamber completed a Committee for European Affairs in place of the Committee for European Integration and named Blanár one of Smer's two members.

The Foreign Ministry's biography records him as a deputy in the third electoral term and again in the fifth through the eighth, from 2002 to 2023, but not in the fourth term of 2006–2010. It dates his chairmanship of the Žilina Region to 2006–2017, so the years outside parliament overlap the start of that regional office. From the fifth term, after the 2010 Slovak parliamentary election, through the sixth, the biography lists him as vice-chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. In the seventh term it lists him as vice-chairman of the Committee on the Incompatibility of Functions and as a member of the Health Committee; in the eighth, as a member again of the Mandate and Immunity Committee and, until October 2020, as chairman of Foreign Affairs. On 23 March 2018 deputies elected him chairman of the Mandate and Immunity Committee in a secret ballot, with 110 votes, in place of Richard Raši, who had become deputy prime minister for investment and informatisation. On the Smer-SD list for the 2016 Slovak parliamentary election he was entered as a member of the National Council and chairman of the Žilina self-governing region, in 11th place.

At the 2020 Slovak parliamentary election he was fifth on the Smer-SD list, received 54,244 preferential votes (10.29 percent of the party's vote) and stood seventh once preferences were counted. The party won 38 seats. That March the new majority gave the Foreign Affairs Committee to the opposition but rejected Ľuboš Blaha for the human-rights chair, by 55 votes to 84 with five abstentions, after telling Smer not to count on him for the foreign committee either. By 23 March Blanár chaired Foreign Affairs. State secretary Martin Klus and former chair Katarína Cséfalvayová called the choice unexpected and said they had expected the former diplomat Peter Kmec; Cséfalvayová hoped Blanár would hold to what she called Slovakia's support for the European Union and NATO. After he became a deputy speaker, Marián Kéry of Smer-SD was elected his successor on 4 November 2020, with 87 votes from 95 members present.

Deputy speaker

On 21 October 2020 the National Council elected Blanár a deputy speaker in a secret ballot, 89 votes from 130 members present, in place of Peter Pellegrini, who had left Smer-SD and sat as an independent. Smer-SD claimed the post, held in that parliament by the largest opposition party, from the 2020 result. Speaker Boris Kollár, of We Are Family, said the opposition was entitled to the office and that his caucus, 16 members with one colleague long absent, would vote for Blanár.

The office lasted for the rest of the eighth term. On 25 October 2023 the National Council chosen at the 2023 Slovak parliamentary election held its constitutive sitting: new members took the oath, substitutes filled seats of deputies appointed to the government, and Pellegrini was elected speaker. The new deputy speakers were Ľuboš Blaha, Peter Žiga, Andrej Danko and Michal Šimečka. Pellegrini closed the sitting that evening.

On 25 February 2022, the day after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, deputies adopted a declaration condemning the attack. Aktuality.sk reported 112 votes from 113 members present. The text called the aggression unprovoked, unjustified and unlawful and demanded an immediate end to the fighting, while treating Donetsk and Luhansk as part of Ukraine. Nearly the whole Smer caucus, including Robert Fico, was reported to have voted in favour; Blaha was absent.

Earlier that month the chamber consented to a defence-cooperation agreement with the United States. On 9 February 2022, 79 of 140 members present voted for it and 60 against. The Smer-SD caucus voted against as a bloc, as did ĽSNS and independents around Pellegrini. Prosecutor General Maroš Žilinka asked to speak and was refused; Blanár then read Žilinka's text, which called the treaty disadvantageous, and Fico said it surrendered part of Slovak sovereignty. Signed the previous week in Washington by Defence Minister Jaroslav Naď and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, with Foreign Minister Ivan Korčok present, the agreement let American forces use the Malacky-Kuchyňa and Sliač airfields, and other agreed sites, without rent for ten years. The government said it did not threaten sovereignty. President Zuzana Čaputová, who backed it, added an interpretive declaration on the disputed clauses. Opposition speakers called it the creation of American bases.

On 10 May 2022 the National Council adopted a further resolution, by 98 votes of 124 members present, condemning the acts of the Russian Federation, President Vladimir Putin and Russian commanders against Ukraine as unprovoked military aggression, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. It demanded an immediate end to the fighting, withdrawal of Russian forces and respect for Ukraine's recognised borders, and it suspended the Inter-Parliamentary Union friendship groups with Russia and Belarus while Russian forces remained in Ukraine. The same sitting rejected Blanár's amendment, which would have called on states to contribute to a peaceful settlement.

Chairman of the Žilina Region

Elections

Juraj Blanár of Direction – Social Democracy (Smer-SD) chaired the Žilina Self-Governing Region from his election in December 2005 until Erika Jurinová succeeded him after the 2017 vote. He replaced Jozef Tarčák of the People's Party – Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, winner of the first election for the office in 2001. Through 2013 a chairman needed a majority of valid votes, with a runoff of the top two if nobody reached it; in 2017 the contest became a single round.

On 26 November 2005 Blanár, for ANO, HZD, the Slovak National Party and Smer, took 24,309 votes (30.36 percent) and Tarčák 23,158 (28.93 percent), so both advanced. In the 10 December runoff Blanár won 25,181 votes (51.37 percent). Turnout in the region was under 10 percent, and the margin was again narrow.

On 14 November 2009 he was returned on the first ballot with 79,519 votes (63.20 percent) for a Smer-led coalition, ahead of Pavel Pavlásek of the Christian Democratic Movement; regional turnout was about 24 percent. On 9 November 2013 he again won outright, with 63,165 votes (54.01 percent) for Smer-SD, the Slovak National Party and the Green Party, against Miroslav Mikolášik, a physician and then member of the European Parliament on a KDH-led list, who finished under 30 percent.

On 4 November 2017 Jurinová, a member of the National Council for OĽaNO, Freedom and Solidarity, the KDH, NOVA and OKS, received 82,034 votes (43.67 percent). Blanár, for Smer-SD alone, received 55,931 (29.77 percent). Turnout was 33.84 percent, 192,459 of 568,708 registered voters. Of 57 assembly seats, independents took 25, Jurinová's coalition 17, Smer-SD 10 and the Slovak National Party 5. He congratulated her. She was the first woman elected to chair a self-governing region in Slovakia.

Regional administration

The region runs secondary schools, social-care homes, cultural institutions, class II and III roads and four hospitals, in Čadca, Liptovský Mikuláš, Trstená and Dolný Kubín. Blanár kept the hospitals in regional hands. He argued that the state had left transferred facilities in debt, unlike state hospitals, spoke of suing over that difference, and said pay in the regional hospitals lagged behind state and private ones.

In the 2007–2013 European Union period he described the territory as a heavy user of EU funds. SME quoted him in January 2016 as saying about €2.1 billion had been contracted there and about €1.6 billion spent. Those totals covered many bodies. As a direct beneficiary the region reported 71 projects worth about €70 million, including some 185 kilometres of class II and III roads, eight bridges, six social facilities and 14 cultural projects. Opposition councillors said in 2013 that far less reached the regional budget, and SME reported debt above €40 million, repayable until 2036.

At Budatín Castle in Žilina, the office told TASR in May 2015 that work since 2009 had eligible costs of €4.4 million: a Polish–Slovak park grant of €696,934; the tower and façades (€2.119 million, 2012–2014); museum space (about €1.176 million); and a chapel grant of €443,000 from the Norwegian Financial Mechanism.

Procurement and property questions

The contract later central to accounts of the term was a 2011 tender for two computed-tomography scanners, with multi-year service, for hospitals in Liptov and Orava. INTES Poprad won at €2,940,000 including VAT, against €1,447,000.10 and €1,603,400.10 from the other two bidders; weighting the machine price and the service price differently meant the lowest overall bid did not win. Blanár signed the purchase. In 2016 he said the law let the region only accept the auction winner or cancel the tender. Miroslav Beblavý, then an unaffiliated MP, put the gap above €800,000; Blanár said the rules had not been broken. In January 2018 Jurinová and Igor Matovič said a Public Procurement Office protocol listed 14 failings and that two scanners had been bought for the price of four, including acceptance of the winner's English documents while another firm was excluded over language.

The defendant was Ján Jarošík, director of the department that ran the tender, not Blanár. On 22 July 2020 the Specialized Criminal Court convicted Jarošík of manipulation in public procurement and a public auction, imposed seven years and €522,000 in damages to the region; he appealed. In April 2022 the Supreme Court upheld guilt and set the sentence at five years in a minimum-security prison. Prosecutors said the region paid more over five years of service than the second bidder had offered, and that hospital staff and the region's lawyer had warned Jarošík the criteria could be abused. On 23 November 2023 a cassation panel quashed that judgment because the appeal court had not dealt with a defence expert opinion, which it called a serious breach of the right of defence, and sent the appeal back. The published decisions and agency reports did not describe charges against Blanár.

Other reporting concerned his property. In 2020 Aktuality.sk described a house above Terchová of more than 290 square metres whose 2012 permit, issued while he was chairman, said he would build it himself for €140,000. The paper said the builder was SOAR, a firm of Gregor Hudec, a relative of the Smer politician Ján Podmanický, and that the region signed 67 contracts with SOAR worth €21,226,701 during his terms, later raised by about €1.5 million. A source put invoices near €80,000; a valuer suggested roughly €350,000 to €586,000. Blanár refused to discuss the price, pointed to his asset declaration — the building is listed as a family house, cottage and log chalet, co-owned with his wife — and answered a question about SOAR with a laughing emoji. Žilina regional police said they had no complaint. The new leadership said it would review some contracts, noting that amendments from 2011 to 2013 needed the procurement office's council and these had not had it.

In May 2018 Denník N reported that on 24 July 2013 Blanár and his wife Viera acquired 14,003 square metres of arable and other land at Poľná in Bernolákovo, in the Bratislava Region, next to plots of the developer Stanislav Haviar, and that in December 2013 he gave the municipality about 2,800 square metres for €2 for a fifth street. The paper said the rest could hold about 25 houses, put the undisclosed price in the tens of thousands of euros — at most €99,999 on a partly blacked-out payment order — and in 2019 reported a November 2018 sale to SPV111, a company in the same circle as the original sellers. Hospodárske noviny reported an estimated gain of about €1.4 million and sellers linked to Peter Sýkora. Blanár said Haviar had advised the purchase and brought the contract, that he had never met the seller, and that it was a long-term investment which he "absolutely" separated from corruption or any favour. Neither the Terchová nor the Bernolákovo reports described criminal charges against him.

Minister of Foreign and European Affairs

Appointment and the diplomatic service

On 25 October 2023 President Zuzana Čaputová appointed Robert Fico prime minister and the other members of his fourth cabinet, including Juraj Blanár of Direction – Social Democracy (Smer-SD) as minister of foreign and European affairs. He succeeded the career diplomat Miroslav Wlachovský. The National Council of Slovakia gave the government its confidence on 21 November 2023, approving the programme by 78 votes to 65 among 143 deputies present.

Career diplomats had headed the ministry since 1998, when HZDS politician Zdenka Kramplová left office, apart from Mikuláš Dzurinda in the 2010–2012 government of Iveta Radičová. Aktuality reported that Fico had also approached the diplomat Miroslav Lajčák, who declined, and former ambassador Marek Eštok, and that Blanár—a Smer-SD politician and former chairman of the Žilina Region, with no diplomatic career—had at first been reluctant.

When Fico introduced him at the ministry on 30 October 2023, Blanár said policy would be sovereign, would put Slovakia’s national interests first, and would still meet obligations to organisations of which the country is a member. Fico said he did not want a policy that was “conservative, cumbersome and incapable of presenting Slovak national interests,” and that the position on European Union and NATO membership was unchanged. The programme approved in November, “To live better, more peacefully and more safely,” set a “sovereign and active” policy under the slogan “Slovakia first,” called EU membership irreplaceable, pledged to fulfil NATO commitments, and named economic diplomacy—support for Slovak firms abroad—a strategic priority, including activity “in all four directions of the world” inside that membership.

Personnel changes

On 29 November 2024 Progressive Slovakia, including former foreign minister Ivan Korčok and deputy chair Tomáš Valášek, called the staffing changes an attempt to “break” and “tidy up” the professional service so that it would not disturb the government’s domestic politics, and the largest turn in foreign-policy orientation since 1998. Korčok said fear and “anarchy” prevailed, that diplomats had stopped exchanging criticism, and that foreign policy had become a “loud trumpet” for fear of war, integration and loss of sovereignty. Valášek said an information-act reply showed 146 hires since Blanár took office against 47 posts lost, alleged inspections of politically inconvenient ambassadors and demotions meant to induce resignations, and argued that paying severance while recruiting was not a saving.

Through the ministry’s communications department, Blanár called the charges “a collection of unsubstantiated attacks and crude manipulation.” He denied that fear and anarchy reigned or that the ministry had imposed self-censorship, telling Korčok that any self-censorship was “against your changing of coats.” He said the ministry had more than 1,100 employees and that a consolidation deal with the finance ministry limited cuts to staff in Bratislava, not those posted abroad, so the reduction was 47 rather than 10 per cent (more than 110). Of those 47, he said, some retired and others left by agreement, so notices concerned only 20 people, whose departure he said he regretted.

In a Denník N interview published on 2 December 2024, diplomat Ivan Novotný, whose post in Blanár’s office was abolished in the November reorganisation, said staff learned of the cuts from a list of personnel numbers rather than from superiors. He called the exercise unlawful—names chosen first, job descriptions fitted afterwards—and said 146 hires against fewer central-office departures contradicted a savings rationale. He said many newcomers were graduates of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) or Saint Petersburg State University, including a colleague moved into the minister’s office who had spent eight of the previous 13 years in Moscow and held three MGIMO degrees. Wlachovský, reported by bne IntelliNews, likewise said long-serving professionals were being replaced by graduates of those schools, which a former defence-ministry official quoted there called training grounds for Russian foreign policy and intelligence. The ministry’s reply gave no breakdown of recruits by education.

Novotný also alleged discrimination over his sexual orientation. After a tabloid inquired about him and his husband, Metod Špaček—whose planned posting as ambassador to the United Nations in New York was cancelled—he said the ministry withheld a €150 childbirth payment and extra parental leave under the collective agreement and demanded documents not required of other parents, and he tied the later loss of his post to that dispute. He said 14 dismissed colleagues were preparing a joint lawsuit. He further alleged that Blanár’s first instruction was to find a report of 14,000 ethnic Russians killed in eastern Ukraine, which staff could not locate in OSCE records; that during the UN General Assembly Blanár said it could not be excluded that Benjamin Netanyahu had helped organise the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack; and that in New York Blanár met Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov without telling his office, after which a Russian state agency published a photograph. The ministry’s statement of 29 November, three days before the interview, rejected the charge of a politicised purge and restated the consolidation figures, but did not answer these claims.

Foreign policy

War in Ukraine

Blanár became foreign minister on 25 October 2023 in the fourth government of Robert Fico, whose Direction – Social Democracy had campaigned on ending transfers of weapons from Slovak state stocks to Ukraine. On 8 November the cabinet rejected a €40.3 million package prepared under the previous government. Reported contents included more than 5,000 rounds of 125 mm ammunition, four million rounds of small-arms ammunition, 140 KUB air-defence rockets and 1,200 mines. Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok said Slovakia would help Ukraine “not militarily.” Fico said on 6 November that if a company wanted to make arms and export them, “nobody is going to prevent that.”

Commercial sales and non-lethal aid therefore sat beside the freeze on army donations. Politico reported in August 2025 that Slovak arms exports reached about €1.15 billion in 2024, roughly 1 percent of the economy, double the 2023 figure and about ten times the level before Russia’s full-scale invasion, while Fico still said official supplies had stopped. In December 2023 Blanár approved €750,000 in SlovakAid for two Božena 4+ demining machines for Ukraine’s emergency service in the Kherson region, calling Ukraine “the most heavily mined country in the world.” In April 2026 the German press agency still listed mine-clearing systems, generators and energy supplies as the aid Bratislava would give, while Fico accused Kyiv of “blackmail” over oil because Slovakia would not send weapons from its own stocks. Opponents called the policy pro-Russian.

Blanár’s argument was that the war had no military solution. On 28 November 2023, at a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels, he met Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba, who thanked him for restating support for sovereignty and territorial integrity inside internationally recognized borders. Slovakia’s position remained that lethal aid from armed-forces stocks would not resume, while private defence work could. On 12 December, before EU leaders considered opening accession talks, Blanár said Slovakia was “ready to support the opening of accession negotiations,” but that Ukraine still had a “long and thorny road” and that reforms had to be implemented, not only adopted. Kuleba called that a positive signal.

He drew the same line for Kuleba’s successor. After meeting Andrii Sybiha on 18 September 2024, Blanár said NATO membership “will create new conflicts,” while Slovakia respected Ukraine’s right to choose its path, supported membership of the European Union, and would continue humanitarian aid and recognition of Ukraine’s borders. Sybiha replied that NATO membership would bring lasting peace and served both countries. On 29 June 2025 Blanár went further, telling Slovak media: “Let us return to respect for international law and seek ways to communicate with the Russian Federation. And perhaps even forgive everything that has happened.” Slovakia was at the same time asking to delay the EU’s 18th sanctions package until the effects of REPowerEU, the plan to end dependence on Russian fossil fuels, were clearer. Sybiha answered the next day that impunity was the root of Russia’s crimes, that forgiving a crime would not stop it, and that “those who have lost no one in this war have no right to make such statements.”

Relations with Russia

Blanár was among the few EU foreign ministers who kept meeting Sergey Lavrov after the 2022 invasion. Reuters reported a meeting on 2 March 2024 at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum. Further contacts followed at the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and on 26 October 2026 he led a Slovak delegation to Moscow.

The Antalya meeting was attacked at home and by neighbours. President Zuzana Čaputová wrote that it had not brought a just peace closer, and that the fastest way to peace was for Vladimir Putin to order his troops out of Ukraine rather than be given hope of victory. On 4 March in Vilnius, Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk criticized Blanár and Hungary’s foreign minister Péter Szijjártó for seeing Lavrov around the burial of Alexei Navalny, and said Bratislava and Budapest had again shown how far they stood from Warsaw on Russia’s attack. Lithuanian prime minister Ingrida Šimonytė called the meeting a regrettable choice.

Russian readouts treated later encounters as working contacts. On 25 September 2024, during the UN General Assembly in New York, the ministers discussed bilateral business, energy and international issues. On 5 December 2024, at the OSCE ministerial council in Valletta, they covered the organization’s problems, bilateral questions and Ukraine.

The October 2026 trip was the first session since 2021 of the intergovernmental commission for economic and scientific-technical cooperation. Blanár said relations “have been and will remain pragmatic and constructive,” that channels had to stay open because of EU moves away from Russian energy, and that Slovakia would cooperate only where sanctions allowed, inside EU and NATO rules. He said Slovakia had voted against REPowerEU and challenged it in court, warning that an end to Russian gas could drag the state company SPP’s take-or-pay contract, which runs to 2034, into arbitration and “billions in penalties.” The ministry said Lavrov promised that Russia would meet its contracts. Blanár called Russia “difficult to replace” for energy stability, repeated that Bratislava wanted a diplomatic end to the war, and offered the capital for lower-level preparatory talks, which he said Lavrov accepted.

European Union, NATO and the United States

Consent to further EU sanctions was linked to energy and industry. The June 2025 request was to hold the 18th package until REPowerEU’s effects were known. In October 2025 Slovakia was the last member blocking the 19th package, which targeted energy traders, financial institutions, firms assisting Russia’s war effort and 117 more tankers described as a shadow fleet. Politico reported that Bratislava wanted assurances on energy prices and help for heavy industry, including carmaking, and lifted the veto on 22 October after a Slovak diplomat said those points were in the draft summit statement. The same week, energy ministers agreed by qualified majority to phase out Russian gas despite Slovakia and Hungary.

Oil through the Druzhba pipeline was the condition for the next round. On 16 April 2026 Blanár told parliament that if the line was still shut when the 20th package came to a vote, “we will not agree,” because Slovakia had no other way to press President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the European Commission to restore transit. Flows via Ukraine had stopped at the end of January, and Slovakia had declared an oil emergency in mid-February. Bratislava, still heavily dependent on Russian crude under an EU exemption also agreed with Kyiv, wanted an independent inspection; Ukraine said Russian drones had damaged the pipe. Outgoing Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán argued similarly. Unlike Budapest, Blanár said Slovakia would not block a €90 billion EU loan to Ukraine.

Inside NATO he argued for more European effort without leaving the alliance. After foreign ministers met in Helsingborg on 22 May 2026, he said European allies should take greater responsibility for the continent’s security and build the defence industry together, including with EU tools. He welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s comment that Washington wanted a strong NATO and an equally strong Europe, and treated as a good signal President Donald Trump’s statement that US troop numbers in Poland would not be cut. Slovakia, he said, already spent 2 percent of GDP on defence and put 35 percent of that sum into modernization, in line with conclusions from The Hague. In September 2026 Fico said in Prešov, “I don’t want Slovakia to be part of any military conflict because of some Article 5,” while adding that the country valued NATO and would meet its duties but that he would keep it out of war. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty treats an attack on one ally as an attack on all; any use of force is a political decision, and the clause had been invoked once, after 11 September 2001.

With the United States, Blanár described defence cooperation—tied to common NATO membership—and economic ties, with more weight on energy, as the pillars of the partnership. Speaking on 16 October 2025 as a new ambassador was named, he called Washington a strategic security ally and noted a government proposal, approved that September, for an agreement to ease work on the Jaslovské Bohunice nuclear plant and Slovakia’s civil nuclear programme. Trade the previous year was put at almost €6 billion, with the United States Slovakia’s ninth-largest export market, led by cars.

Neighbours and multilateral diplomacy

The war divided the Visegrád Group. Associated Press reporting in March 2024 set Polish and Czech arms support for Ukraine against the line in Budapest and Bratislava, and carried Tusk’s rebuke of the Lavrov meetings. Day-to-day diplomacy continued. The Slovak embassy in Warsaw reported that on 13 March 2025 Blanár met Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski on EU, NATO and cross-border business; Poland was described as Slovakia’s third-largest trade partner, with turnover above €13 billion a year. On 18 February 2025 in Prague he and Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavský signed a consultation plan for 2025–2026 under a 2014 agreement. Hungary was the closer partner: Szijjártó also met Lavrov in Antalya, and in 2025–2026 the two governments opposed the Russian-gas phase-out and, during the Druzhba stoppage, the 20th sanctions package.

Blanár argued that Balkan security should not be lost in the Ukraine argument. In Helsingborg he called stability in the Western Balkans important for Europe, said Slovakia backed the region’s EU integration, and noted Slovak troops in the NATO KFOR mission, which Bratislava was ready to reinforce if needed.

The largest multilateral bid of his tenure was a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council for 2028–2029. On 15 September 2026 he told ambassadors in Bratislava that the campaign had opened on 13 July at UN headquarters, that Slovakia was the Eastern European group’s candidate, and that the General Assembly would vote in June 2027 by a two-thirds majority of members present and voting. More than 120 states had pledged support, he said, and nothing should be assumed. The slogan was “Respect. Dialogue. Stability. Peace.” A successful term, he said, should build on Slovakia’s 2006–2007 membership and on elected members as brokers of consensus.

The reopened embassy in Canberra was presented as part of that wider reach. On 14 October 2026 Blanár formally reopened a mission the previous government had closed at the end of 2022, leaving a consulate-general in Sydney and shifting responsibility to Tokyo. The cabinet had decided to reopen it in May 2024; ambassador Monika Tomašovičová presented credentials to Governor-General Sam Mostyn on 10 December 2025. Blanár said an embassy was required for the government programme’s Indo-Pacific focus, political and economic. Besides Australia, it covered Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

Party role and domestic positions

Juraj Blanár has been a member of Direction – Social Democracy (Smer–SD) since the party was founded, and from 2001 he chaired its organisation in the Žilina Region. The presidium ended that regional role on 29 March 2017, electing Ján Podmanický once Blanár had become a national vice-chairman. At a congress in Prešov on 10 December 2016, delegates elected him a vice-chairman with 311 of 385 votes, alongside Peter Pellegrini, Peter Kažimír, Robert Kaliňák, Marek Maďarič and Peter Žiga. Robert Fico, re-elected chairman, said the outgoing vice-chairmen Pavol Paška and Dušan Čaplovič would not stand. Party statutes place the chairman, vice-chairmen and general manager on the presidium by virtue of office.

He remained when Peter Pellegrini left. On 10 June 2020 Pellegrini resigned as vice-chairman, said he was returning the Smer brand to its founder, and said he could not imagine a future alongside Fico; on 29 June he announced Voice – Social Democracy (Hlas). At a reconstruction congress on 18 July 2020 delegates again elected Fico and chose Blanár, Ladislav Kamenický, Richard Takáč, Ľuboš Blaha and Erik Kaliňák as vice-chairmen. Fico said each had a large majority, gave Blanár regional development, kept Robert Kaliňák on the presidium, and said the party respected the Pellegrini group’s decision and did not treat it as the main opponent. In October 2020 Smer nominated Blanár for the deputy speakership of the National Council of Slovakia that Pellegrini had left; he was elected with 89 of 130 votes. The party website still lists him as a vice-chairman with Kamenický, Blaha, Takáč and Erik Kaliňák.

On 11 November 2021 he was one of three Smer deputies, with Vladimír Faič and Marián Kéry, to vote for a bill “on assistance to pregnant women” tabled by deputies around Anna Záborská. The bill would have extended the pre-abortion waiting period from 48 to 96 hours, restricted advertising and renamed the procedure. It failed by one vote: of 134 deputies present, 67 voted for, 38 against and 28 abstained, and most of the Smer group abstained.

He has argued for closing shops on Sundays. In May 2020 he said Smer had long proposed a Sunday-trading ban while in government but had sought a deal with retailers, calling closure on public holidays a first step. On 3 February 2023, on a bill to shut most shops on Sundays, he said Smer was “of course in favour of Sundays being closed” and would back the text, “but not in this form”, objecting to openings on 1 May, 8 May, 29 August and 1 September, and he moved that the bill be returned without those exceptions. In March 2023 he told RTVS he would personally vote for a ban, calling that his view rather than the party’s.

As foreign minister he rejected European Parliament resolutions on the rule of law in Slovakia. On 17 January 2024 the Parliament adopted, by 496 votes to 70, a text condemning plans to amend the criminal law and abolish the Special Prosecutor’s Office. He said the ministry rejected interference in domestic politics and called the moves of some Slovak members, naming Vladimír Bilčík, a continuation of an election campaign: “When that did not work at home, they misused the European arena for it.” He added that in opposition from 2020 Smer had warned of a weaker rule of law without a European response. On 20 May 2026 a further resolution on democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights passed by 347 votes to 165, with 25 abstentions. Blanár wrote that it “contains only a political assessment and has no legal effect”, “does not reflect reality”, and that the government disagreed. He called it proof that some members used European Union institutions as “a platform for progressive-liberal activism”, and said disagreement on migration, the media and foreign policy was no reason to lecture Slovakia on democracy.

Personal life

Juraj Blanár is married and has three children, according to a biographical note prepared for the 2009 election of the chairman of the Žilina Region and published by the daily SME on 28 September 2009. That note listed his interests as sport, hiking and music, and it did not name his wife or the children. The curriculum vitae on the website of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs likewise gives no family names. In a July 2020 report on a house in Terchová, Aktuality.sk described his wife as a co-owner of the property and did not name her.

His asset declaration for 2024, as summarized by Topky, listed arable land and built-up plots with courtyards in Trnové, a borough of Žilina, together with a family house and garage there. In Terchová the same declaration listed permanent grassland and other plots, and a family house which the report described as taking on the character of a log chalet, with a garage.

On 20 December 2025 the Žilina site Žilinak.sk reported a vehicle incident the previous Friday on a bend in Trnové known locally as the Trnovské esíčko, and wrote that Blanár had been at the scene. He stated publicly that the episode had happened to his daughter and called it an ordinary property-damage event, saying the damage was below the threshold at which the police had to be called, that nobody had been injured, and that no public installation had been damaged. Witnesses told the site that his daughter had been driving, that a small child had been in the car, and that she left before a police patrol arrived; the outlet reported that police classified the case as a traffic accident.

The ministry curriculum vitae states that in athletics he was a champion of Slovakia and a champion and vice-champion of Czechoslovakia, in the pupil and junior categories. It also lists him as a participant in Biela stopa SNP. The organizers in Kremnica describe Biela stopa, formerly also called Biela stopa SNP, as the oldest regularly held cross-country ski event in Slovakia; the first race was run on 17 February 1974 under a name referring to the Slovak National Uprising, and the event is now staged from Skalka near Kremnica. The same curriculum vitae says that he has taken part as a co-driver in rally competitions.

The ministry lists, under other activities, membership of the Slovakia–UK Alumni Association, associated with the British Embassy and the British Council in Bratislava; of the Slovak committee of the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association; and of the Slovak group of the International Federation for Structural Concrete, which the ministry abbreviates as FIB. Topky’s account of the 2024 asset declaration also described him as chairman of the civic association Spoločnými silami.