Having graduated in law in Bratislava, Fico joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1987
The great success of the pro-Russian populist, the socialist Robert Fico, is certainly causing great concern to the entire world of the Italian left, which certainly finds itself taken aback after having for years accused Meloni and Salvini of having sovereignist and populist allies in the East. It is no coincidence that during the plenary session in Strasbourg the president of the European People’s Party joked with the left (leaving room for voices that would like an ever closer alliance between the People’s Party and the ECR for the next European elections) “I was attacked because Berlusconi has received bottles of vodka from Putin when he was no longer in government and today we have a socialist who could go to the government of Slovakia and who is openly pro Putin and no one says anything? The socialists must clarify their position on Fico, it is surprising that they have lost their voice just now”, Weber told journalists. And in fact the winner of the Slovak elections, among his many extravagances and contradictions, has never hidden the his sympathies for Putin, appearing much more critical of aid to Ukraine than the much criticized Hungarian Orban.
Having graduated in law in Bratislava, he enrolled in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1987. After the “Velvet Revolution” which led to the collapse of the Czechoslovakian communist regime in 1989, he joined the Party of the Democratic Left (SDL), heir to the Communist Party in Slovakia. From 1994 to 2000 you represented your country at the European Court of Human Rights. Many have already defined Fico’s victory as a sort of nemesis of the European left which has established a sort of cordon sanitaire towards the centre-right parties, and which now has to deal with a populist at maximum power in its own home. Strangely, the head of the Italian PD delegation in the European Parliament Brando Bonifei, silent until yesterday, was quick to call for the immediate expulsion of Fico’s party, SMER-SD (direction – social democracy), from the family of European socialists.
On the other hand FIG in the election campaign he showed himself for what he is: a populist, demagogue, who won again, thanks to an election campaign focused on anti-immigrant rhetoric (a theme that has now become fundamental and a priority in every European country) on vaguely anti-European sentiments (which is gaining more and more converts in the eastern periphery of Europe) and above all on the opposition to sending further military aid to Ukraine. Just like the much criticized, on the left, Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki, who since the beginning of the conflict has been one of Ukraine’s best and most faithful allies, as unanimously recognized. Now, however, Poland has to deal with the discontent of the agricultural sector, which feels competition from wheat imports from Ukraine, and which the Polish leader could not fail to take into account. The looming elections, as was obvious, are changing the agenda of interested European politicians. Europe cannot fail to leave bewildered those who have long wanted greater participation and action on the major issues that are important to citizens, and not on mere bureaucratic issues.
The position of timid equidistance between Russia and Ukraine, held by the much reviled Orban, isolated until a few weeks ago, is now starting to gain converts, not only in Europe. So Europe’s eastern front is showing many more cracks than previously thought. The easy rhetoric of the left on the countries of Visegrad and on their alliance with the Italian centre-right, it is showing all its ideological futility. Because the problem is showing that these are not individual cases of a specific political party, as certain leftists and their media followers would like to believe. The victory of the communist Fico demonstrated that the problem is much bigger and that it comes to question the very concept of absolute loyalty to the Atlanticism of the old continent. The creation of a complementary model, created by China and Russia, which is making inroads in the so-called Brics and now also in Saudi Arabia, in the face of a weak and absent Europe could lead to consequences whose extent now appears difficult to quantify.
This could have repercussions on the very stability of the idea of a united Europe. The ideological and radical Green deal of Timmermans and the too many uncertainties about migration policy, as the right has been saying for years, have contributed to making Europe much less attractive even for those who, like the Eastern countries, have recently received great benefits from joining the EU. But the problem is not only limited, clearly to the eastern part of Europe, which is perhaps the least faithful to European principles, if not only for temporal reasons. But also in Holland or in Germany, parties are making their way which, too easily, in the past defined themselves as populist. Just think of the farmers’ party in the Netherlands, which after reaching 20% of the vote in the last regional elections, is now hovering around 13% and risks being the tipping point for a future Dutch government. While in Germany alongside the far right of the AfD, now steadily above 20%
an equally extremist party is appearing on the scene, but this time from the left, which for some reason is much less newsworthy and arouses much less concern than the German establishment and Brussels. We are talking about the populist movement better known as the Left Party, or Linke, one of whose most prominent figures, Sahra Wagenknecht, has become a political star through charismatic performances in parliamentary debates and on television talk shows. The party that has had a bit of celebrity in Italy because it decided to nominate Carola Rackete as its candidate in the next European elections, and which for now has 5% of the consensus in the polls. His entourage is made up of a mix of former social democrats and former East German communists. And it is no coincidence that broadsides are starting to arrive at the chancellor from this party too Scholz both on migrants and on military aid to Ukraine. Now we await the vote in Poland, where Meloni’s allies in the Pis have an 8-point lead over the People’s Party of the former president of the European Council, Donald Tusk. And then in November it will be Holland’s turn. So the European Championships in June are looked at by all European countries as never before on this occasion as one of the decisive events. The victory, as it seems, of the centre-right could, also in light of the national votes of recent months, lead not only to a change in the balance but also to a decisive change in EU policy, as clearly reiterated a few weeks ago by the co-president of the group of European conservatives Nicola Procaccini “We, European Conservatives and Reformists, have a clear vision of the future of the EU: we want to bring Europe back to its original conception: a union of peoples and nations that deals with few but important things, respecting the principle of subsidiarity ”
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