Eastern Europe - no shift to the right

2024-06-12 14:40:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

The upheaval in Europe is great: in the most important EU countries in Western Europe, extreme right or far-right parties have won many votes in the European elections - including Germany, France, Italy and Austria. Things look different in the east of the European Union - especially different than the image of this part of Europe suggests. In the minds of many, this region is a stronghold of Viktor Orban and Jaroslav Kaczynski, the right-wing nationalists and populists.

From the Baltic countries to Bulgaria, nationalist, far-right and Eurosceptic parties almost everywhere failed to receive or lost votes. Only in Slovenia and the Czech Republic did two parties allied with Orban and his right-wing nationalist party Fidesz win the European elections.

Otherwise the picture is surprising and varied. In Hungary, Orbán's party lost a significant share of the vote in an election for the first time in many years, with a newcomer and challenger to the prime minister taking 30 percent of the vote. In Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk's pro-European and liberal-conservative coalition unexpectedly won first place in the European elections. In Slovakia, a progressive party won clearly ahead of right-wing nationalist Prime Minister Robert Fico's ruling SMER party, which came under attack a few weeks ago. In Romania and Bulgaria, far-right nationalist and pro-Russian parties received fewer votes than expected.

Eastern Europe - no shift to the right

Change of power in Hungary in 2026?

The most notable are perhaps the results of the European and local elections in Hungary, which were held at the same time. For the first time in a European election since 2009, the alliance of Orbán's right-wing nationalist party Fidesz and the small Christian Democratic party KDNP did not win an absolute majority, taking less than 45 percent. Although Fidesz won compared to all other parties, observers see the result as a slap in the face for Prime Minister Orban, who is used to convincing successes.

Orbán's biggest critic, Peter Magyar, who recently entered the political scene with his Tisza party, just weeks before the election, achieved around 30 percent - by far the highest result achieved by an opposition party against Orbani since 2010 when he came to power. Magyar is a Fidesz renegade, has held well-paid posts in Orbán's state apparatus in recent years, and appeared in public for the first time in February 2024 as an opposition politician. Magyar represents the conservative positions of the right-wing Fidesz in many aspects, for example on migration policy, but promises to clean up the corruption of the Orban system and problems in the health and education systems. In addition, unlike Orban, he is explicitly pro-European.

Orban commented on his party's poor performance in a defiant way: "We have defeated the old and the new opposition, and no matter what the current opposition is called, we will defeat it again and again," he told supporters on election night. on Sunday (June 9, 2024). On the other hand, his challenger, Peter Magyar promised a change of power in the next parliamentary elections in 2026 and announced: "Now the dance begins!"

Poland: Only second place for PiS

Defeat of PiS in Poland

In Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk's liberal-conservative Civic Coalition (KO) came in first with 37 percent, although many observers expected the governing coalition, which has been in power since last fall, to suffer defeat. Jaroslav Kazczynski's right-wing nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, which was in power from 2015 to 2023, won 36 percent and thus second place, despite being ahead in preliminary polls.

"We showed today that we are a ray of hope for Europe", said Tusk on Sunday (06/09/2024) evening in Warsaw. Poland will decide in the coming months what Europe will look like", continued the prime minister. His country is a “leader in the EU.” PiS leader Kaczynski was belligerent and described the election results as “a big challenge.” Referring to the colors of the Polish flag, he called on his party to build a “red and white front.”

A setback for Tusk was the performance of his smaller coalition partners: the Christian Democratic Third Way achieved seven percent, while the Left six percent. And both were captured by the anti-European, nationalist far-right Confederation, which won just under 13 percent.

Surprise in Slovakia

One of the big surprises of the European elections was the clear victory of the left-wing social-liberal opposition party Progressive Slovakia (SP) with 28 percent. This party won more than the SMER party of Prime Minister Robert Fico, who was seriously injured in an assassination attempt in mid-May. SMER's negative rhetoric after the attack apparently did more damage to the party - Fico, for example, recently accused the opposition in his first statement of being behind the attack and spread far-right conspiracy theories.

Robert Fico

In the Czech Republic, the right-wing liberal Action of Disaffected Citizens (ANO) party led by former prime minister and billionaire Andrej Babis won with 26 percent. He belongs to the camp of right-wing nationalists in the east of the EU, he is mainly critical of migration but not anti-European. The pro-European, conservative-liberal alliance of Prime Minister Petr Fiala's government won only 22 percent of the vote. The far-right SPD party lost almost half of the vote compared to the 2019 European elections and the 2021 parliamentary elections and received only five percent.

No "occupation of Brussels"

In Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria, old government parties and alliances won, whose orientation is sometimes difficult to categorize. However, in general, they represent pro-European and at the same time conservative-nationalist positions. One of the winners of the elections was the Social Democratic Party of Romania (PSD), which entered into an alliance with the National Liberal Party (PNL) for the European elections. Far-right parties were unable to make a breakthrough in any of the three countries. In Romania, the pro-Russian, far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) won many votes, but remained at the low end of forecasts at 14 percent.

Not only has there not been a general shift to the right in the east. The self-proclaimed leader of the "sovereignists" in the region, Hungary's Prime Minister Orban, has clearly missed his goal of "occupying and transforming Brussels" in the European elections. Not only because of his poor election results, but also because he lacks strong allies in Central and Southeastern Europe./ DW