The Slovak Foreign Policy Association was established in August 1993 as an open discussion forum on international affairs and the Slovak foreign policy with no affiliation to any party or movement. Main initiator and founder of the association was a former Slovak ambassador Magda Vášaryová. Another founding members of the SFPA were, among others, Rudolf Chmel, Pavol Demeš, Dominik Bartosiewicz and other personalities of public life. Magda Vášaryová was a chair of the Board of Directors from its establishment in 1993 until 2000. From this year on Professor Juraj Stern chairs the Board.
Central activities of the association until 1995 consisted of organizing the public discussion events focused mainly on the Slovak foreign policy issues. The activities were organized predominantly within programmes Modern Foreign Policy and Jour-Fixe.
In 1995, the Research Center SFPA (RC SFPA) was founded as an integral part of the association. The Research Center has become the first independent, non-governmental think tank in the Slovak Republic and it specializes exclusively in international relations research.
The first periodical publication of the SFPA, “Listy SFPA”(Letters SFPA), had been published since 1997 and released bimonthly. In the beginning it was used as an informant of SFPA members. On the basis of the Letters, a first Slovak foreign political periodical Foreign Policy emerged and it has been published since 2005.
In 1995 a first regional office of the Research Center SFPA was established in Prešov and three years later, in 1998, another office arose in Banská Bystrica. In 1995 a first regional office of the Research Center SFPA was established in Prešov and three years later, in 1998, another office arose in Banská Bystrica.
Since 1999, the SFPA secondary school debating clubs have been run in several Slovak towns.
The SFPA is together with the Slovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) a founder of the Research Center SFPA. The Center was established as a non-profit organization, which started to exist after a transformation of a former allowance organization the Slovak Institute for International Studies of the Slovak MFA. This new RC SFPA started up its activities in 2004.