the Communists, who obtained about 6% of the popular vote. Initially, Slovakia experienced more difficulty than the Czech Republic in developing a modern market economy. Slovakia joined NATO on 29 March 2004 and the EU on 1 May 2004. Slovakia was, on 10 October 2005, for the first time elected to a two-year term on the UN Security Council (for 2006–2007). The next election took place on 17 June 2006, where the leftist Smer got 29.14% (around 670 000 votes) of the popular vote and formed a coalition with Slota's Slovak National Party and Mečiar's 'Movement for a Democratic Slovakia'. Their opposition comprised the former ruling parties: the SDKÚ, the SMK and the KDH. The election in June 2010 was won by Smer with 34.8% but Fico was unable to form a government, so a coalition of SDKU, KDH, SaS and Most-Hid took over, with Iveta Radičová as the first woman Prime Minister. This government fell after the vote of the European Financial Stability Fund was connected with a no-confidence vote, as SaS argued, that Slovakia, should not bail out much richer countries. Smer won the election in 2012 with 44,42%. Fico formed his Second Cabinet. It was a singleparty government claiming 83 out of the 150 seats. It officially supported the position of the EU during the Russian military intervention in Ukraine (2014–present) but sometimes doubted the efficacy of EU sanctions against Russia. In autumn 2015, during the European migrant crisis, the leaders of the four Visegrád Group states rejected the EU's proposal to reallocate 120.000 refugees. The election 2016 took place in March 2016; some days later Fico formed his Third Cabinet, composed of four parties. Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico resigned in March 2018 following the largest street protests in decades over the murder of Ján Kuciak, an investigative journalist who was investigating high-level political corruption linked to the organized crime. Slovak President Andrej Kiska appointed Peter Pellegrini as the new prime minister to succeed Fico. In March 2019, Zuzana Čaputová was elected as the first female President of Slovakia. She was a member of the liberal Progressive Slovakia party, which had no seats in parliament. After the 2020 Slovak parliamentary election, the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities won the election and Igor Matovič became the Prime Minister in March 2020. In April 2021, Prime Minister Eduard Heger was sworn in two days after the resignation of