Nationalists Bent on Reshaping EU Are Dealt a Setback in Slovakia

(Bloomberg) -- European voters may be starting to put a damper on nationalists who want to shift the continent's political direction.

Ahead of next month's European Parliament elections, Slovakia provided one of the last signals of voter sentiment when it elected a socially liberal anti-corruption campaigner as president over populist challengers.

Zuzana Caputova's victory may serve as a warning to euroskeptic leaders next door such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is teaming with other nationalist forces in a bid to turn the EU-wide ballot into a referendum against further European integration. Though her new post is largely ceremonial, her rise was hailed by liberals across the EU.

“Caputova is everything that Orban is not,” said Lukas Kovanda, chief economist at Czech Fund, a Prague-based investment group.

While Slovakia has avoided the lurch toward nationalism embraced by voters from Italy to Poland, governments in those countries are seeking allies to pool their forces in the EU legislature after the May 23 ballot.

Parties such as Italy's League and Vox in Spain have surged in support, emboldened by the EU's inability to resolve challenges from Brexit and Greece to youth unemployment and migration. That's been a boon for the nationalist narrative that the EU's decision-making structure is both too invasive into members' national interests and not powerful enough to fix things.

Almost 70 percent of the world's most influential economies are controlled by populist governments of non-democratic regimes, double the number of three years ago, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Economics.

But there are signs of pushback by European voters who, while dissatisfied with traditional parties, value the EU's prosperity and visa-free work and travel.

Caputova, 45, catapulted from political obscurity to become Slovakia's first woman president-elect, helped by public anger about political corruption. That was also a key factor in neighboring Ukraine, a non-EU country where President Petro Poroshenko faced voter acrimony over endemic sleaze in a first-round presidential ballot.

A poll last month showed centrist parties in European Parliament with a comfortable lead over nationalist forces. In Poland, the ruling Law & Justice party, which like Orban has clashed with Brussels over its efforts to give politicians influence over the judiciary, is struggling to maintain its lead in popularity before a parliamentary ballot slated for the fall.

While Orban is still dominant at home, he has seen his influence checked in after the EU's largest political family suspended his Fidesz party's membership. And in one of the models of the Hungarian leader's self-styled "illiberal democracy", Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling party lost major cities in Sunday's municipal elections for the first time since 1994.

Caputova, a divorced mother of two, secured 58 percent in Saturday's vote, eclipsing EU official Maros Sefcovic, who ran for Slovakia's governing Smer party. Both candidates are broadly pro-EU and fought off challenges from nationalists including an anti-NATO judge and a far-right party leader who praised Slovakia's World War II Fascist puppet government. Her platform included closer economic and defense ties with the EU and rejected populism as too divisive for society.

“Slovakia sent a signal that central Europe hasn't given up on liberal democracy," said Michal Vasecka, head of the Bratislava Policy Institute think tank. “It's a signal of hope for the Czech Republic, Hungary and especially Poland.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Radoslav Tomek in Bratislava at rtomek@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, Michael Winfrey, Balazs Penz

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