Speaking on behalf of the S&D group in the European Parliament, Portugal’s Pedro Marques said on Tuesday 3 October that his political family was waiting to see how the SMER party, a member of the ‘Party of European Socialists’, would behave once it had formed a government in Slovakia, before deciding whether Robert Fico’s party could remain within the social democratic family.
“We’re not going to hang around for 10 years like the EPP did with Mr Orbán. There was a lot of rhetoric during the campaign. If there is a move from rhetoric to action, a sanctions process could be the next step”, said Mr Marques. He did not rule out the possibility that the situation regarding respect for the rule of law in Slovakia could be examined in the future. He added: “If it becomes a government programme or concrete actions, then we will have to take action, at least at party level. We don’t expect the group to act before the party at the moment. We are fully aligned”.
Mr Marques also cited two indispensable conditions for the social democrats: continued aid to Ukraine and a ban on governing with the far right.
Affiliated with the SMER party are MEPs Monika Beňová, Katarína Neveďalová and Robert Hajšel, who sit in the S&D group.
On Tuesday, the chairman of the EPP group in the European Parliament, Germany’s Manfred Weber, asked the social democrats to clarify their position on the SMER party, noting a similarity between Mr Fico’s and Mr Orbán’s comments “on Russia and minorities”. The co-president of the Greens/EFA group, the Belgian Philippe Lamberts, criticised the “reluctance” of the social democrats to conclude that Mr Fico no longer belongs to their political family (see EUROPE 13262/31). (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion with editorial staff)