Further to the EU’s promotion of gender and self-ID (previous post), here’s Andrew Tettenborn at Spiked – Slovakia is defying the EU’s gender diktats:
Slovak premier Robert Fico – a left-wing populist – may be a little too chummy with both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping for many people’s comfort. He is also, like other Roman Catholics (the largest religious group in Slovakia) and many other Slovaks besides, socially conservative. Last month, he gained the necessary three-fifths supermajority in the Slovak parliament to change the constitution. That constitution now explicitly states that there are only two sexes, that only married heterosexual couples may be considered for adoption, that paid surrogacy is banned, and that parents retain a veto over the sex education their child receives in school.
Cue outrage from the usual suspects – Amnesty etc. And the EU:
By rights, Brussels shouldn’t be all that concerned – social policy isn’t generally seen as its domain. Furthermore, the EU purports to champion democracy – and whatever you make of Fico’s constitutional amendments, he has undoubtedly carried them out legitimately and democratically. Nonetheless, the European Commission lost no time in tearing a strip off Bratislava. These changes are ‘illegal’, it harrumphed, amid multiple accusations that Slovakia is turning into ‘another Hungary’. Brussels made clear its intentions to stop Slovakia, if necessary, through legal proceedings.
This is all very bizarre. Fico’s changes are popular, impeccably constitutional and largely uncontroversial to vast numbers of people (at least in Catholic-majority Slovakia). The fact that the EU is so determined to quash them suggests some rather ugly truths about the Brussels mindset.
The suits in the Berlaymont are clearly petrified of any challenge to their ‘progressive’ worldview. An eastern European leader with the temerity to suggest his people’s own values should take precedence over the EU’s abstract, DEI-centric dogma is, to their mind, an existential threat. Perhaps even more so than Viktor Orbán, Fico is a danger to the EU’s model of democracy, where nation states are guided by those who supposedly know best to reach the ‘correct’ outcome.
Undoubtedly, the EU’s posturing is a desperate move from a governing class that sees its power slipping….
Fico will no doubt be portrayed as a far-right threat to the happily progressive European Union.
Mick Hartley 