Proponents of Machiavellian thought often regard politics as a struggle for power in which values and morality take a backseat and are only evoked when they serve the ultimate goal. The European Socialists have recently shown that this logic does not apply in all situations.
There are countless examples at the EU level where the Realpolitik-approach trumped moral considerations: from EPP leader Manfred Weber’s charm offensive towards Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, all the way to the Greens seriously considering admitting the populist Italian Five Star Movement into their ranks.
Ahead of next June’s European elections, many European parties seem to be fishing in foreign waters to get a few more seats once election turmoil is over, especially the newcomer parties being courted by the different groups in the European Parliament.
However, Thursday’s announcement by the Party of European Socialists (PES) seems to buck this trend.
Instead of sacrificing the moral compass to gain more leverage at the European level, the Socialists stuck to their principles and expelled the two Slovak Socialist parties, Smer and Hlas, over their attempts to build a coalition at home with the far right.
Robert Fico’s Smer, who won the Slovak election two weeks ago in a landslide, turned out to be a particular thorn in the European Socialists’ side.
The party has made headlines for its pro-Russian behaviour and the push to halt all support to Ukraine. The PES thus suspended their membership over “a clear divergence from the values” of the socialist family, a PES statement said.
But the Socialists also adopted punitive measures against Hlas, the more moderate Social Democratic Party that split from Smer a few years ago. Hlas is not a formal member of PES but is associated with the party.
While Smer did not comment on the expulsion and seemed to be rather indifferent, Hlas was caught by surprise as the party sees itself well set in strong social democratic ways.
But the message by the European Socialists was clear: You hook up with the far right, and I will file for divorce.
The socialist S&D group also announced it would kick the three Slovak lawmakers in the European Parliament out of the group and hold a formal vote next week.
However, the Socialists are here giving up much more than the three MEPs – a seat on the European Council, as Smer’s Fico will likely become the next Slovak prime minister.
The message of the Socialists is clear here: We are better than the EPP, which struggled for years with the issue of how to deal with problem children in their own ranks.
The conservative EPP kept Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party in despite clear signs that Fidesz was attempting to dismantle democratic institutions in Hungary.
“In every family, there is an enfant terrible,” the then-EPP president, Joseph Daul, said in 2018. “But as I am a Christian Democrat, I prefer to keep my enfant terrible inside the family and to try to talk to him, to reason with him.”
It took years of wrangling until Fidesz finally quit the EPP in March 2021 to avoid being expelled.
The Socialists took only two weeks to decide, thereby gaining the elusive moral high ground and staking their claim as the most credible political force against the shift to the right next year.
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The Roundup
EU countries did not meet the required qualified majority to approve the European Commission’s proposed 10-year extension for the use of the contentious herbicide glyphosate, with the next crucial vote to be held in the first half of November.
The EU’s new climate commissioner has been criticised for backsliding on a commitment to push for a fossil fuel phase-out at the upcoming COP28 climate summit in Dubai, ahead of talks on Monday (16 October) where EU countries are expected to agree their stance.
Ukraine’s Western allies are creating coalitions of countries to divide the labour of producing military equipment amid concerns that supplies and production chains are running too low and are too slow to support Ukraine long-term.
As France and Germany negotiate a joint agreement to resolve differences over the EU’s proposed electricity market reform, Spain, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, presented a new compromise proposal on Wednesday (11 October), which seems to put Paris’ back against the wall.
Don’t miss this week’s EU Politics Decoded and the Tech Brief.
Look out for…
- High Representative Josep Borrell visits China on Saturday
- Commission President Ursula von der Leyen meets with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama in Tirana on Saturday.
- Eurogroup meeting on Monday.
- Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni meets with Janet Yellen, US treasury secretary, in Luxembourg on Monday.
Views are the author’s
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Alice Taylor]
Source: euractiv.com
