Prime Minister Robert Fico’s Smer party will take five seats in the European Parliament and the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ), the Hungarian Coalition Party (SMK) and the Christian Democratic Movement have each won two seats, according to unofficial results reported by the SITA newswire on June 7. The Slovak National Party (SNS) and the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) will each have one seat according to the unofficial results.
Smer, the senior party in the governing parliamentary coalition in Slovakia, had the support of 31.8 percent of the Slovak voters in the balloting held on June 6 for representatives to the European Parliament. Of the three parliamentary opposition parties, SDKÚ collected 16.97 percent of the vote while SMK received 11.35 percent and KDH 10.09 percent.
The junior parties in the governing coalition, HZDS and SNS received 8.9 percent and 5.55 percent of the vote, respectively, wrote SITA.
Despite expectations for an extremely low voter turnout, 19.04 percent of the eligible voters cast ballots, a 2 percent higher turnout than Slovakia managed five years ago, when only 17 percent of the eligible Slovaks voted.
According to SITA, preferential votes cast by citizens most probably moved Smer’s Monika Flašíkova Beňova to the first position for Smer even though she was listed third on its candidate list. Smer’s candidate on the top of its list, Boris Zala, is also expected to take a seat in the EP along with current EP deputy Vladimír Maňka. Monika Smolková and Katarína Neveďalová should be the other two EP deputies for Smer.
The HZDS will send Sergej Kozlík, a former finance minister, to the European Parliament while the SNS will have Jaroslav Paška as its representative in the EP.
SDKÚ will have current EP deputy Peter Šťastný and former foreign affairs minister Eduard Kukan; Anna Záborská, current EP deputy, and Miroslav Mikolášik will represent Slovakia for the KDH while the SMK will send Edit Bauer, already in the EP, and Alajos Mészaros.
