One contender for the foreign minister's job is Gianfranco Fini, the leader of a once-fascist party and now deputy prime minister.
Given this background, not to mention Germany's detested wartime occupation of Greece and the recent rise of neo-fascist political party Golden Dawn, Katidis has since admitted the "stupidity" of his actions.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the fascist Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), frequently endorses the restoration of the historical Russia within the boundaries of the Russian empire.
Similar sentiments saw Greece's fascist-sympathizing Golden Dawn party garnering roughly 7% of the polling this weekend at the expense of mainstream conservative and leftist parties.
Mr Zeman replied by calling Mr Haider and his party "post-fascist" and accusing it openly of seeking to veto Prague's EU membership application.
In Italy, Gianfranco Fini, who has distanced his party, the post-fascist National Alliance, from its fascist heritage, joined the government of Silvio Berlusconi in 1994.
Those who criticise Portillo's apparent "conversion" evidently know very little about his diverse background as a son of an anti-Fascist Spanish socialist and a teenage Labour party supporter.
This week Francesco Cossiga, a former Christian Democratic president who has just founded his own party, attacked Mr Fini for his fascist past.
He had successfully fused his own party with that of the formerly neo-fascist Gianfranco Fini to create a single movement of the right, the People of Freedom (PdL).
But he would be vulnerable to Gianfranco Fini, the foreign minister, who is also deputy prime minister and leader of the second-biggest party on the right, the formerly neo-fascist National Alliance.
ECONOMIST: Italy takes a wobbly step towards two-party politics
But others, including the post-fascist National Alliance's leader, Gianfranco Fini, whose party is set to join Mr Berlusconi's in a coalition government if the left loses the election due by next spring, suggested that the boss had mistackled.
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