Caputova: EU Standing at Crossroads of Integration and Weakening

Pezinok, May 25 (TASR) – The European Union is standing at cross-roads of deeper integration or its own weakening, president-elect of Slovakia Zuzana Caputova said after casting her vote in the European Parliament elections in her hometown of Pezinok near Bratislava on Saturday.

Caputova, who is due to be inaugurated as the country’s president on June 15, said she hopes that the turnout in Slovakia will be higher than in the past. Slovakia has had the EU’s lower turnouts in all three EP elections since it joined the bloc in 2004; last time it was a mere 13 percent.

“There was a relatively intense campaign prior to the elections, both in the public media and social networks. I believe that we won’t be the last ones this time,” said Caputova, a liberal civic activist elected Slovakia’s president in a popular vote in March.

At the same time she named “anti-European forces” as a new and strong element of the current elections, which “have begun co-operating across the EU”.