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Opinion
February 16, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 26
"There are measures and initiatives where we have goodwill in Western European countries,"
he said on January 5. "There are others where
we will perhaps get applause from the Visegrad countries, and still others where we agree with all other 27 EU member states."
Germany itself is set to try to reforge the relation- ship with Emmanuel Macron’s France following the agreement on a new coalition between Angela Merkel’s CDU-CSU bloc and the SPD. Relations with the V4 will remain a secondary consideration – despite the CSU’s warm relations with Orban’s Fidesz party. The Weimar Triangle format meet- ings between Germany, Poland and France will remain on ice until the Law and Justice party’s conflict with Brussels abates.
Thirdly, Hungary and Poland are likely to find their diplomatic position weakening this year as their disputes with Brussels escalate, and Slovakia and Czechia try to differentiate themselves more and more from their unpopular populist neighbours.
New Polish premier Mateusz Morawiecki seems to have been selected by the country’s real ruler Kaczynski as a way of at least dialling down the tensions with Brussels, but so far this has not worked. So long as Kaczynski regards playing
to the domestic gallery – with initiatives such as the recent bill on the Holocaust – as more important than building bridges with the West, his prime minister will be put in an impossible position.
Orban, by contrast, has every interest in dialling up the tensions with Brussels, as he seeks a third consecutive term at the April general election. Both countries are being investigated by Brussels over a host of issues and, whether or not the EU is finally ready to take strong action, the disputes are set to poison relations all year. Orban may partially back down after the election – as he has done many times before – but it hard to see Kac- zynski doing the same, even if his domestic politi- cal position looks impregnable before the 2019 general election.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has played along with Orban and Kaczynski over the years
to shore up his domestic support, whipping up hatred of Islam and lambasting the EU. But last year he began to increasingly differentiate him- self from his two neighbours as their relations with Brussels worsened and the debate about the future of the EU started in earnest.
This is probably partly tactical. The Slovak parlia- mentary opposition is an unattractive hodgepodge of Eurosceptics, populists and neo-Nazis. Fico may be hoping to consolidate the country’s largely pro-EU voters behind his Smer party, or at least secure their tolerance as the least worst option.
He may also, given the difficulty he will have to form another workable coalition, be already think- ing about his legacy, and putting Slovakia in the EU core would fit nicely. He is visibly exhausted after dominating Slovak politics for more than a decade and reportedly underwent a quadruple heart bypass in 2016.
He appears to be looking for a way out and there has even been speculation that, unlikely as it might seem, Fico harbours an ambition to take a senior post in the Commission. This would enable him to gracefully exit the bear pit of Slovak politics, as he tried and failed to do by standing for the ceremonial post of president in 2014. In a Central Europe where attention seeking populists such as Orban dominate the political scene, it might not take much to be embraced by the EU like a prodigal son.
Slovakia’s anti-immigrant stance was anyway as much rhetoric as substance. With little fanfare, Fico temporarily took in migrants from Austria, and just by accepting a few dozen migrants un- der the quota scheme, Slovakia avoided the EU infringement procedure launched against its V4 neighbours.
Fico has now declared his ambition for Slovakia to be at the heart of the EU project, something that it already qualifies for as the only member of the V4 that is in the Eurozone. He has also explicitly stated