{"id":347981,"date":"2024-03-25T10:05:01","date_gmt":"2024-03-25T09:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2024\/03\/25\/slovacchia-korcok-pellegrini-presidente\/"},"modified":"2024-03-29T12:04:55","modified_gmt":"2024-03-29T11:04:55","slug":"in-slovakias-presidential-elections-it-will-be-neck-and-neck-between-pro-europe-korcok-and-the-nationalist-pellegrini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2024\/03\/25\/in-slovakias-presidential-elections-it-will-be-neck-and-neck-between-pro-europe-korcok-and-the-nationalist-pellegrini\/","title":{"rendered":"In Slovakia’s Presidential elections it will be neck-and-neck between pro-Europe Kor\u010dok and the nationalist Pellegrini"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – The head-to-head was\u00a0almost a foregone conclusion, but the outcome of Slovakia’s\u00a0first round of presidential elections in Slovakia made the race between the two favored candidates even more intriguing<\/strong>. Polls that opened\u00a0Saturday (March 23) in the EU member country rewarded the former foreign minister and the\u00a0candidate backed by the center and liberal oppositions, Ivan Kor\u010dok<\/strong>, who came in first ahead of the top-ranked speaker of the national parliament and leader of the ruling HLAS-SD party, Peter Pellegrini<\/strong>. Eyes are now on\u00a0the April 6 runoff, when the\u00a0orientation of\u00a0voters of the seven candidates defeated in the first round will be decisive, as well as the turnout of those who decided not to vote on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\"Ivan<\/a>
Slovakia’s former foreign minister and presidential election candidate backed by the center and liberal oppositions, Ivan Kor\u010dok (credits: Tomas Benedikovic \/ Afp)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With the vote count<\/a>\u00a0finalized, Kor\u010dok won 42.51 percent, more than five percentage points more than Pellegrini<\/strong> (37.02 in line with polls before the vote<\/a>). It was a brilliant achievement\u00a0for the former foreign minister between 2020 and 2022 – given just below the Social Democratic challenger before the start of voting\u00a0– but now it won’t be easy to go sifting through those 7.5 percentage points that separate him from succeeding the pro-European Zuzana \u010caputov\u00e1<\/strong> as President of the Republic. “Surely I have to talk to voters in the governing coalition who are opposed to the direction the country is taking, especially in foreign policy,” the candidate of the United Centrist Oppositions immediately attacked, referring to both the pro-Russian tendencies of the red-black executive led by Social Democrat Robert Fico <\/strong>(in which both Pellegrini’s party and the far-right Slovak National Party participate) and the growing isolationism from the traditional allies of Poland and the Czech Republic<\/strong> within the Visegr\u00e1d group.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The real key for Kor\u010dok will be the mobilization of those who did not go to the polls on Saturday, or almost half of those eligible: only 51.9 percent of voters took part in the first round<\/strong>, a figure still in line with the last 20 years of elections in Slovakia. Another major\u00a0factor will be the orientation of\u00a0one in every five voters who did not vote\u00a0for Kor\u010dok or Pellegrini, who, however, may lean more toward the latter. In particular, the ex-premier between 2018 and 2020 and leader of the party founded in 2020 after the split from SMER could cash in on the endorsement not only of the Social Democrats and far-right government allies but also of the pro-Russian-oriented third-place finisher, the former Minister of Justice between 2006 and 2009 (in the Fico government) and former president of the Supreme Court between 2009 and 2014, \u0160tefan Harabin<\/strong>, who won 11.74 percent of the vote on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The Red-Black Slovakia<\/h3>\n

After the September 30, 2023 elections in Slovakia, the pro-Russian Social Democracy of SMER-SSD emerged as the leading force in Parliament, followed by the Progressive Party of\u00a0former vice president of the EU Parliament, Michal<\/strong> \u0160ime\u010dka<\/strong>, and the Social Democrats of HLAS-SD. Pellegrini’s 27 deputies were instrumental in forming a majority with the two pro-Russian forces<\/strong> – the Social Democrats of SMER and the extreme right-wing Slovak National Party – although the party leader himself assured that “with our presence, we will ensure that Slovakia’s\u00a0 EU and NATO membership will not be jeopardized.”<\/p>\n

\"Fico<\/a><\/figure>\n

From left: Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, and HLAS-SD leader and presidential candidate, Peter Pellegrini (credits: Vladimir Simicek \/ Afp)<\/p>\n

But the decision to start a pro-Moscow government\u00a0also had consequences at the European level. On October 12, the presidency of the Party of European Socialism (PSE) suspended the membership of Slovakia’s SMER-SD and HLAS-SD parties, while the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats\u00a0suspended the membership of the three Slovak MEPs<\/strong> due to concerns over policies on the merits of Russia’s war against Ukraine, migration, the rule of law, and the rights of the Lgbtq+ community. All this was compounded in the last three months by a wave of protests<\/a> to greenlight the\u00a0Criminal Code reform,<\/a> which provides for shortening the statute of limitations for the most serious crimes<\/strong> – from 20 to 5 years – and the abolition of the office of the special prosecutor<\/strong> dealing with\u00a0crimes, including those related to organized crime and high-level corruption. The opposition’s complaint is of an attempt to weaken the judiciary\u00a0<\/strong>– in favor of Fico’s party members and supporters of the high-level government – in a country where the current prime minister\u00a0had to resign in 2018 following the murder of journalist J\u00e1n Kuciak<\/strong> and girlfriend Martina Ku\u0161n\u00edrov\u00e1<\/b>, who had exposed links between the ‘ndrangheta and the Slovak elite (including members of his SMER\u00a0party).<\/p>\n

This reform of the Penal Code could open a clash with Brussels similar to the one in Hungary, which\u00a0triggered\u00a0the conditionality mechanism on the rule of law. At the time of the presentation of the draft, the EU Commission, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), and the EU Parliament\u00a0warned<\/a> Bratislava of the fact that changes to the Penal Code could “seriously” compromise the level of protection of the EU’s financial interests in Slovakia<\/strong>, specifically in the area of corruption, fraud, and mismanagement of EU funds. In this scenario, countermeasures in Brussels would be inevitable. After it entered into force on March 15 – with some slight modifications to meet the objections of the three EU institutions –\u00a0the Commission is expected to evaluate the reform as a whole and decide whether there are still concerns that warrant action,<\/strong> ranging from infringement proceedings to activation of the rule of law conditionality mechanism.<\/p>\n

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The first round of the presidential election saw the candidate of the United Center Oppositions surprisingly come in first, ahead of the Speaker of Parliament. But the April 6 runoff is still up for grabs: the voters of the seven defeated candidates and the mobilization of those who did not go to the polls will be decisive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5647,"featured_media":347943,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25681],"tags":[26462,26463,26464,26465,26360],"class_list":["post-347981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-election-slovakia-2024-en","tag-ivan-korcok-en","tag-peter-pellegrini","tag-president-slovakia-and","tag-slovakia-and"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5647"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347981"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":348704,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347981\/revisions\/348704"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}