Central Europe sees calm after Hungarian poll

Central Europe`s main powers, lining up together to join the European Union, breathed a collective sigh of relief earlier this week at the fall from power of Hungary`s belligerent Premier Viktor Orban.

Diplomats and analysts said a change of government in Hungary would restore calm to a region that had been inflamed by Orban`s tone and nationalist rhetoric.

In national elections on Sunday, an alliance of Hungary`s ex-communist Socialists and liberal Free Democrats won a narrow majority to topple Orban`s conservative coalition.

"The change in Hungary reflects an expected shift due to the extremist agenda of Orban`s party and government," Jan Figel, Slovakia`s deputy foreign minister for EU integration, said.

"We hope this will bring more constructive, neighbourly relations not based on the past... but rather for a European way to a common future," he told Reuters.

The election outcome means that Hungary, like Poland and the Czech Republic, the region`s three main ex-communist powers, are all now under leftist parties which have shifted to a Western social democratic model.

It also removed fears of a rightist axis of Orban, Austrian far-right firebrand Joerg Haider and Edmund Stoiber, Bavaria`s premier and possibly Germany`s next Chancellor, said Pal Tamas, head of sociology at Hungary`s Academy of Sciences.

With Orban out of the way, the new centre-left power axis should be able to repair damaged relations in the so-called Visegrad Group, a Benelux-type forum for regional cooperation, which also includes Slovakia.

Slovakia`s Figel said he saw "a strong new momentum for Visegrad cooperation".

The group fell apart earlier this year after Orban reignited a decades-old sore over the Benes Decrees, edicts that expelled 2.5 million Germans and Hungarians from then Czechoslovakia at the end of World War Two.

The European Commission has insisted EU enlargement will not be sidetracked by rows over practically defunct laws, but Brussels was clearly irked by squabbling among the candidates.

Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Boguslaw Majewski said he was confident Hungary`s shift would help ease tensions, noting: "The timing of (Hungary`s) elections is convenient given the intense (EU) negotiation process which lies ahead."

Hungary`s brash young leader had previously annoyed Romania and Slovakia by introducing a controversial new law offering special welfare benefits to ethnic Hungarians living abroad.

The Czechs and Slovaks were so incensed at Orban`s tone that they pulled out of a Visegrad summit in February, aimed at forging a united front for the final, complex negotiations with the EU.

Hungary`s likely new foreign minister, Socialist Laszlo Kovacs, said the change of government would "soothe tensions".

"Our foreign partners know they can expect a more balanced foreign policy style from us, one that is more in line with international norms," Kovacs told Reuters in an interview.

He said Visegrad foreign ministers should meet soon and the four prime ministers could possibly get together at a summit in Budapest in the summer.

The recent regional ill-feeling is expected to subside, but tensions could resurface with coming elections in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia, where authoritarian ex-Premier Vladimir Meciar is poised for a return to power.

Like many in the EU and Nato, the two Western bodies Slovakia wants to join, Hungary`s Kovacs said he had his doubts about being able to work with Meciar.

"I have experience of Hungarian-Slovak cooperation from the time when Meciar was the prime minister. I don`t think he is the best partner for Hungary," Kovacs said.