Ruling Slovak centre-right parties have won enough votes in a weekend election to form a pro-EU government if they team up with a new pro-business party, according to preliminary official election results released today.
Nationalist former prime minister Vladimir Meciar's HZDS emerged as the biggest single party from the two-day general election, with 19.5 percent of the vote.
But Meciar, shunned by the international community after his hard-line rule in the mid-1990s, would be unable to form a majority government.
Instead, a new broad rightist coalition is expected to boost ties with the West and smooth Slovakia's path into the NATO military alliance later this year and the European Union in the next two years.
Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda's SDKU won 15.1 percent, while current governing coalition partners the Christian Democrats scored 8.25 percent and the ethnic Hungarian SMK party polled 11.2 percent.
These three parties are likely to form a pro-European integration government with ANO, a new party set up last year by media mogul Pavol Rusko, which polled eight percent.
That four-party alliance would hold 78 seats in the 150-seat parliament.