Eduard Kukan was a Slovakian politician who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1998 to 2006. He was a candidate in the presidential election held on 3 April 2004, and although pre-election polls had suggested he would come first, he actually came in third behind the eventual President Ivan Gašparovič and former prime minister Vladimír Mečiar, thus preventing him from contesting the run-off. He was elected Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in 2009, a position he held until 2019.

Ivan Gašparovič is a Slovak politician and lawyer who was the third president of Slovakia from 2004 to 2014. He was also the first and currently the only Slovak president to be re-elected.