(CN) — Voters in Slovakia and Poland over the weekend delivered a foretaste of what to expect in European Union elections this June: a strong showing for parties critical of the policies coming from Brussels.
In Slovakia, Peter Pellegrini, a left-leaning former prime minister who's called for an end to the war in Ukraine and closer ties with Russia, was elected president on Saturday with nearly 54% of the vote. His win was viewed as a blow to pro-EU forces because his rhetoric about negotiations with Russia may undermine the bloc's message that Moscow must be defeated in Ukraine.
Polish voters also delivered an anti-EU message after the ultra-nationalist right-wing Law and Justice party picked up the most votes in regional elections on Sunday, according to exit polls and preliminary results.
The results from these Central European nations confirmed a more general swing in Europe where many voters are embracing parties that go against the liberal, pro-business, pro-green, supranational and pro-Western policy direction of Brussels.
This shift toward EU-skeptical, nationalistic and often far-right parties is expected to give the EU its most right-wing European Parliament ever after June elections when voters in all 27 member states choose representatives in Brussels.
Polls indicate that Europe's two mainstream groups, the center-right European People's Party and the center-left Socialists and Democrats, will retain by far the most seats.
But two far-right groups — Identity and Democracy and the European Conservatives and Reformists — are expected to see their number of seats swell by a total of about 36. Unofficially, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni leads the ECR group and France's Marine Le Pen heads ID. Both are on the far right.
Currently, ECR and ID hold 127 seats in the European Parliament but combined they are projected to grow to 163 seats, which would make them larger than the Socialists and Democrats, who are expected to win about 139 seats. The conservative EPP is on track to remain the biggest group with about 175 seats.
This weekend's elections, then, were the latest sign that June's elections likely are going to cause upheaval in Brussels.
In Slovakia, Pellegrini is an ally of Prime Minister Robert Fico, a pro-Russian and left-leaning nationalist politician who convincingly won parliamentary elections last October after campaigning to end military support for Ukraine.
Pellegrini, 48, beat Ivan Korčok, a longtime diplomat and former Slovak foreign minister who obtained 47% of the vote. Korčok advocated against allowing Russia to seize territory in Ukraine.
The campaign for the presidency was dominated by their differences over the war. Pellegrini replaces outgoing President Zuzana Čaputová, who is staunchly pro-Ukraine.
After his win, Pellegrini vowed “to ensure that Slovakia remains on the side of peace and not on the side of war.”
Though the presidency is a mostly ceremonial position, as is the case in many European constitutions, Slovak presidents hold some power. They serve as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and they ratify international treaties, can veto laws passed by parliament and appoint top judges.
With Pellegrini in the presidency, Fico is expected to harden his stance against supporting the war in Ukraine and deepen his ties with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the most outspoken critic of the Western approach to the Ukraine war.
Slovakia and Hungary are NATO members and Fico and Orbán are seen as obstacles in the alliance's efforts to arm Kyiv and force Russia to withdraw from Ukraine.
Since taking the helm, Fico has stopped weapons shipments to Ukraine and he has rejected imposing more sanctions on Russia. He also shares the Kremlin's views that blame Ukrainian far-right nationalists, American meddling and Western anti-Russian sentiment as root causes for the conflict in Ukraine.
The Polish regional elections also signaled trouble for Brussels by showing that Law and Justice remains a formidable force in Poland despite being ousted from national government in parliamentary elections last October.
In the October ballot, Law and Justice was defeated by a big-tent coalition led by Donald Tusk, a staunch pro-EU politician who is now serving as prime minister. Tusk leads the Civic Coalition, a collection of parties representing mostly urban liberal voters.
Tusk's achievement was hailed by pro-EU advocates as a major victory, even a turning point, in the fight to keep anti-EU parties out of government.
But Sunday's local elections were a clear reminder that many Polish voters, especially those in smaller towns and the countryside, are deeply conservative and skeptical of the liberal mandates coming from Brussels.
Law and Justice took in 33.7% of the votes for 16 regional assemblies, the highest share of any party. Tusk's Civic Coalition came in second with 31.9% while Third Way, a center-right party competing with Law and Justice for conservative votes, got 13.5%.
After preliminary results came in Sunday night, Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of Law and Justice, beamed.
“As Mark Twain once said: ‘The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,'” he told his supporters.
Still, the results are mixed for Law and Justice because it got slightly fewer votes than in the last local elections in 2018 and it was on track to lose two regional assemblies compared to the previous term.
Also, candidates supported by Civic Coalition won mayoral races in Warsaw, Katowice and Gdansk and Tusk's party was the largest group in 10 of Poland's 16 provinces while Law and Justice was the largest in the remaining six.
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.
Follow @cainburdeau
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