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Smer-SD Becomes Full Member of Party of European Socialists
Tuesday 08 December 2009 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, December 8 (TASR) - Slovakia's largest governing party Smer-SD has become a full member of the Party of European Socialists (PES) faction in the European Parliament, after the Socialists voted overwhelmingly to this effect on Monday, a spokeswoman for Smer-SD Katarina Klizanova-Rysova announced on Tuesday.
PES, temporarily cancelled the provisional membership of Smer back in October 2006 after it formed a Coalition Government that included the Slovak National Party.
At the time, head of European socialists Poul Nyrup Rasmussen said PES acted in line with the Berlin Declaration of 2001 that specified that PES member parties should not associate or work with political parties that incite racial hatred and ethnic prejudice, of which SNS was deemed to be guilty.
The PES executive should was supposed to review Smer-SD's membership status in June 2007 but a month earlier it had put debate on the issue back to October 4. In October it again postponed it to February 8, 2008 – planning to start a new dialogue with Smer-SD.
Smer-SD membership was restored at the 8th convention of PES in Prague on Monday, where Rasmussen was re-elected as leader of European socialists despite his open admission that socialism and socialist democratic parties have failed to properly respond to the economic crisis. Rasmussen then said they were unsuccessful even in the elections to their national parliaments and most recently in the election to the European Parliament, in which it dropped 35 seats (to 196) compared to 2004.
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