Six Slovak parties will share seats in the European Parliament after the 2019 European Parliament elections, which took place on Saturday in Slovakia. Two of them, including the winner, are currently not in the national parliament. The largest governing party ended second and lost its first election since 2002. The remaining two governing parties are left without any MEP. The far right party came third and Slovaks elected its first MEP of Roma ethnicity.
The non-parliamentary coalition Progressive Slovakia-Together won the 2019 European Parliament election in Slovakia with 20.11% of the votes, followed by the currently largest governing Smer-SD (15.72%) and the far right Kotleba People's Party Our Slovakia (12.07%). Also making it to the European Parliament are the non-parliamentary Christian Democrats (9.69%), and two parliamentary opposition parties Freedom and Solidarity (9.62%) and Ordinary People (5.25%).
The non-parliamentary Hungarian Coalition led the list of parties outside the EP with 4,96%, missing the European Parliament by less than 400 votes. The junior governing Slovak National Party scored 4.09%, followed by non-parliamentary Christian Union with 3.85%. The opposition parliamentary We are family party, which united with populist Italian Mateo Salvini and French Marine Le Pen before the election had only 3.23% and another governing party Most-Híd earned only 2.59%.
Slovaks elected 14 MEPs. Four for PS-Together: Michal Šimečka, Vladimír Bilčík, Michal Wiezik, Martin Hojsík. Smer-SD will be represented by the trio Monika Beňová, Miroslav Číž, and Robert Hajšel. The far right Kotleba People's Party Our Slovakia will send Milan Uhrík and Miroslav Radačovský, the Chistian Democrats will be represented by Ivan Štefanec and Miriam Lexmann. Lucia Ďuriš Nicholsonová and Eugen Jurzyca are the new MEPs for Freedom and Solidarity and Peter Pollár of the Ordinary People party is the first Slovak MEP of Roma ethnicity. Moreover, Miriam Lexmann will be sworn in only when Great Britain leaves the EU.
The voter turnout stood at 22.74%, which is a record in Slovakia for a European election. In spite of that, Slovakia's turnout was the worst in the EU, according to preliminary results. The highest number of voters took part in Belgium - 89%. The EU's average stood at 50.95%, more than in 2014, when the overall turnout was 42.54%.
What should we take into consideration when we speak about the European elections in Slovakia? Zuzana Botiková put this question to the analyst Radovan Geist of the Euractiv news portal.
Radovan Geist on EU elections
Máte problém s prehrávaním? Nahláste nám chybu v prehrávači.
