Page 33 - RusRPTAug24

bne August 2024 Central Europe I 33
Slovenian SDS and the Slovak Smer of populist Prime Minister Robert Fico.
Previously, he had expressed an intention to join ECR, but due to the opposition
of some of its members over Hungary's pro-Moscow stance, ECR party leader and Italian premier Giorgia Meloni rejected his plea. To save face, Fidesz argued that they refused to join because ECR accepted "anti-Hungarian" Romanian far right party ARU to its ranks.
Hungary's nationalist leader has been trying to lure PiS from the ECR to
join his alliance of Central European nationalists but was rebuffed by his ally, former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
Later the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV), which won the Dutch elections in November, the Portuguese Chega party and the Spanish Vox joined the Patriots for Europe, the latter leaving ECR. The
leader of Italy’s La Liga Matteo Salvini signalled that his party could also join the new right-wing alliance, saying that "they are working on it".
Hungary's leader has toured European capitals in the past weeks to discuss the country’s presidency priorities, but talks also evolved around gathering support for the new right-wing alliance.
The manifesto, signed on June
30 in Vienna, outlines the vision
for a Europe consisting of strong, independent nations that reject further centralisation of power in Brussels and uphold national sovereignty, fighting illegal migration and pushing back EU measures to reduce climate change.
The Hungarian prime minister announced that the parties would convene on July 8 in Brussels for an inaugural meeting, but that will prob- ably be rescheduled as Orban arrived
in China in the early hours of July 8.
Liberal hvg.hu, citing Le Monde, writes that the big question is whether France’s National Rally would be ready to join the new alliance with its 30 MEPs. National Rally suffered an unexpected defeat in the runoff in the French general election at the weekend, falling to third place after leading in the first round the previous weekend.
In that case, Marine Le Pen's ID faction would be emptied and the Patriots
of Europe would become the third- largest faction in the EP, which would bolster Orban’s aspiration as a leader of Eurosceptic forces in the EU. He has campaigned with the slogan of taking back institutions from bureaucrats.
Individual factions are to file their names and deputies by July 15 before the opening session of the new European Parliament on July 16-19.
Slovak PM’s Smer party isolated in European
Parliament after split from S&D group
Albin Sybera in Bratisava
The leftist Smer party of the Slovak populist Prime Minister is set to remain isolated in the European Parliament after Fico slammed the European Socialists & Democrats as “having nothing in common” with left- wing politics and social democracy.
Fico made the comments in a YouTube video shortly after a veteran Smer politician and a leader of Smer’s five MEPs, Monika Benova, told media that she “won’t be talking to socialists any further” over Smer’s joining of their European Parliament fraction, as bne IntelliNews reported last week.
The Party of European Socialists (PES), the umbrella group for Europe’s Socialist parties, suspended Smer as well as its key coalition partner, the centre-left Hlas party, after Smer and
Hlas formed a ruling coalition with far-right SNS last October.
Fico said he conditions Smer’s return to the Socialist grouping with what he terms a “sovereign” stance on the war in Ukraine, migration, EU veto and ethical issues.
The Smer-led coalition axed the state military aid for Ukraine shortly after making a comeback to power and the party leaders maintained aggressive anti- immigration rhetoric. Fico has repeatedly slammed Brussels for “gender ideology” and openly cosied up to the Hungarian radical right-wing strongman Viktor Orban a hardened political stance criticised by the opposition and liberal media for serving as a cover to pursue a power grab at home.
Speculations in the Czech and Slovak media have previously ensued that Smer
is on the way into the “Patriots for Europe” grouping set up by Orban, together with Austrian far-right leader of FPO party Herbert Kickl and Czech billionaire populist and ex-PM Andrej Babis.
Babis has been a staunch backer of Fico and his Smer party and is eying a return to power in Prague at next year’s parlia- mentary elections, closely observing Fico’s success in Bratislava last year.
Fico founded Smer in the early 2000s as initially a “third-way party” but gradually took over a large part of the traditionally strong socialist electorate in Slovakia while maintaining nationalist and conser- vative messages blended with nostalgia after the communist regime in the then Czechoslovakia which ended in 1989.
"Robert Fico has for long years relied
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