MEP Milan Mazurek (source: SME - Marko Erd)
Slovakia’s far-right politician Milan Mazurek of the Republika party has appeared on the Brussels-based news outlet Politico’s list of “the 23 kookiest MEPs”.
The website describes Mazurek as a “smiling racist”, giving him 5/5 scary emojis. The same level of scariness, according to the outlet, is represented by the Polish MEP Grzegorz Braun, who destroyed a Jewish religious symbol and a Christmas tree with EU and Ukrainian flags; along with Romania’s pro-Russian MEP Diana Șoșoacă and Germany’s pro-Russian MEP Petr Bystron.
Mazurek, one of the 15 newly-elected Slovak MEPs, is the first Slovak politician to have lost a seat in the Slovak parliament following a ruling that found him guilty of racist comments against the Roma. He was then a member of the far-right People’s Party Our Slovakia, also known as the ĽSNS party.
Holocaust denier
The politician, who joined Republika in 2021, does not believe that the Holocaust happened, according to his former friend.
The Republika leader and MEP, Milan Uhrík, said in the past that he did not know if the Holocaust happened because he was not a historian. Uhrík apologised for the comment last year.
Republika leader and MEP Milan Uhrík portrayed on a billboard that reads, "Let's stop the nonsense from Brussels!" (source: SME - Marko Erd)
During the coronavirus pandemic, Mazurek mocked infectious diseases expert Peter Sabaka on social media. He called him a “Covid prophet”, “fascist creature”, and a “criminal”. In the past three years, the court ordered Mazurek to pay thousands of euros to the doctor, delete the content about Sabaka from his social media, and apologise to him.
Uhrík, like his party, also defamed and attacked scientists during the pandemic.
Mazurek did not want to live in Brussels
In the European elections in 2019, ĽSNS’s number two on the slate failed to win a seat in the European Parliament. He received 39,496 votes. Mazurek then concluded that life in a big Western European city was not his cup of tea.
“When I thought about it, I could never have imagined flying regularly to the cosmopolitan and multicultural cities of Western Europe, due to the sessions of the European Parliament, and spending a large part of the year there. I'm a person who likes life in a village, near the forest and nature, and big cities are nothing for me.”
Five years later, one of the candidates on Republika’s state, Mazurek took 71,656 votes in the European elections and announced that Republika has set to work on building a strong patriotic faction in the European Parliament.
As Politico writes, 23 MEPs from seven different countries are necessary to form a political grouping in the European Parliament.
