Surging support for the far right in Central Europe: Dispatches from the Czech Election 2025

The convincing victory in the Czech elections by Andrej Babis’s populist movement ANO (‘Yes’) with some 35% of the vote heralds his return as prime minister of the Czech Republic and immediately raises questions and concerns about what it means for the country, for Central Europe and for the EU. This begins with confirmation of the rise of right-wing Eurosceptic populism in Central Europe, especially as Babis’s movement has joined the ‘Patriots for Europe’ grouping in the European Parliament launched by Viktor Orbán. It also signals the reluctant stance the new Czech government will adopt vis-à-vis the EU’s support for Ukraine.

Let us briefly examine the sources of Babis’s victory and the reasons for concern about its regional implications. The entry into the government of two far-right Eurosceptic parties marks a clean break with the policies and rhetoric of previous Czech governments. However, the Czech institutional context and the specific brand of Babis’s populism may mitigate the tempting conclusion of ‘the irresistible rise of Central European Trumpism’.

Babis’s ANO clearly defeated the core of the centre-right government coalition Spolu (‘Together’), which commanded over 23% of the electorate. Two other parties that had been part of the government, but had preferred to run separately, returned good results: STAN, a liberal party of mayors, polled 11% and the ‘Pirates’ 9%. In fact, all things considered, the two main political blocs – that of Babis and that led by Prime Minister Petr Fiala – have remained relatively stable since the election in 2021. However, the political environment has changed considerably since then: war in Ukraine has reignited the Russian question and security concerns rage over Europe’s capacity to respond together. The political landscape in Central Europe has also changed, with Orbán’s newly launched Patriots, Fico hardening his illiberal drift and Poland electing Karol Nawrocki as president, a self-proclaimed Trumpist backed by PiS (Poland’s Law and Justice party). So, as with Trump’s second administration, questions around Babis 2.0 often focus on the likely deviation from the experience of Babis 1.0, especially with regard to his European policies and his attitude to Russia and the war in Ukraine.

Although ANO’s preferred option was to form a minority government with the tacit support of two smaller right-wing populist parties, Babis, now under pressure from both and apparently with no alternative option, has decided to bring them into the government. This is important given the profile of the two parties. The first is the SPD (7.8%), the Freedom and Direct Democracy Party that advocates referenda on every major issue, including membership of the EU and NATO. In the European Parliament it belongs to the same group as Marine Le Pen, whose picture has featured on election billboards next to the party leader, Tomio Okamura. Born in Japan and of Japanese origin on his father’s side, he returned to Prague after an unsuccessful attempt to settle in Japan. There is no politician more concerned about the threat posed to the Czech national identity by migration than Okamura. He will have to drop the referenda demands, which have already been ruled out by Babis. His bid for the Ministry of Interior has been turned down by Babis, especially as Okamura was already demanding the dismissal of the police chief. Instead, Babis has offered that two party-related experts join the government, one of whom could become minister of defence.

The second party to join the government is the party of ‘Motorists’ (6.8% of the vote) led by Filip Turek, an entrepreneur and former racing car driver who is until now a member of the European Parliament sitting among the ‘Patriots’. His party is hard-line nationalist right and a proponent of the free market, appealing particularly to young male voters. Turek has asked for the post of foreign minister, and seemingly got it. Although Babis claims that foreign affairs will be part of his domaine réservé, a foreign minister who has been photographed giving a Nazi salute from his car window hardly seems fit to represent his country in European fora.

What Babis and his two acolytes agree on are their emphasis on national sovereignty and their reluctance to see the furthering of European integration and Brussels’ interference with the domestic affairs of member states. They are hostile towards the European migration pact, regarding it as too little too late. They share opposition to ‘societal liberalism’ of the woke variety, and to the Green Deal. Babis thinks it is bad for Czech industry and especially for Škoda, part of the Volkswagen group, which has been thriving the last quarter of a century on combustion engines. And ‘Motorists’ prefer ‘real’ cars that make real noise and smoke.

However, these were not the reasons for Babis’s election victory, although it should be noted that the Czech public is not particularly inclined to support European integration. Unlike the outgoing Prime Minister Fiala, who ran a campaign that dramatized the Russian threat and the European security context, Babis focussed on domestic issues, on the failures and outright blunders of the Fiala government, on inflation and pensions, on social issues. In short, Babis syphoned the votes of former left-wing voters, including, in this election, Stacilo (‘Enough’) – an odd association of crypto-communists and ex-social democrats with a clear pro-Russian take – which, with 4.3%, did not make it into the parliament and thus into the Babis-led coalition.

This process started in the 2021 election when, for the first time, both the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party failed to reach the five per cent threshold. One million votes were then redistributed among the stronger parties. As a result, the Social Democratic Party, 150 years after its foundation and only a few years after it had led the government, was ejected from parliament.

As happens in such situations, splits occurred. Most recently some former Social Democrats attempted to join the post-Communist Left grouping Stacilo (‘Enough’), which garnered 4.3% but failed again to enter the House.

The landscape after the electoral battle indicates that the centre of gravity in Czech politics has moved to the populist Right with strong Eurosceptic overtones. This will affect the Czech Republic’s stance on issues on the European agenda and the foreign and security orientation of the country. ‘Do we want to move towards the East or towards the West?’ was the main question outgoing Prime Minister Fiala asked voters. Babis did his utmost to dodge the question but clearly indicated that he would not support new European efforts to supply weapons to Ukraine. This ends the Czech ammunition initiative, a major success of the previous government, which tried to coordinate at a European level (and with third countries) supplies of ammunition for Kyiv. Babis also made it clear that he does not intend to observe the NATO-agreed 5% of GDP defence spending pledge made by Fiala. It should be noted that the Czech Republic only reached the 2% of GDP spending goal in January 2025. Czech political and military support for Ukraine has been relatively strong since the beginning of the war. In line with the Strategic Document for the next five years, it has embarked on a major acquisition programme (F-35 jets, artillery, armed vehicles) which will, of course, take years to be implemented. In all likelihood, it will be scaled down by Mr Babis, who indicated that he saw no need to increase military at the expense of welfare spending: ‘Pedro Sanchez is telling the truth by saying he needs the money for the social system.’

His argument, it seems, resonated with voters (only a third of Czechs think defence spending should rise). The understanding of Russia’s aggression as an existential threat has been declining over the last two years. Russian drones over Estonia and Poland did not change that in the campaign. ‘Ukraine fatigue’ also seems to have affected attitudes towards the Ukrainian refugees. There were close to 150,000 Ukrainians working in the Czech Republic before the invasion, and the Czech construction industry could not do without them. Over 250,000 more have arrived since the war started. They speak a Slavic language, learn Czech fairly easily and do not make collective ‘minority’ demands on the state. In a country of ten million it creates tensions and problems but nothing comparable to the nature and scale associated with immigration in Western Europe.

The Ukrainian issue extends to the support for the country’s EU accession. According to the latest Eurobarometer, the Czechs are bottom of the list in support for further enlargement of the EU, a position usually occupied by the Austrians, the French or the Dutch.

The Czechs (unlike Bulgarians) are not eager to join the euro. The debates among economists fail to produce a convincing case for it, despite highlighting the potential advantages for a country that conducts three-quarters of its trade with the Eurozone.

These cautious, lukewarm attitudes to European integration have their roots in the 1990s when Vaclav Havel’s strongly pro-European narrative was combined with his post-1989 search for a democratic anchor in the West. He was opposed by the Thatcher-like Eurosceptic Prime Minister (and President after Havel) Vaclav Klaus, whose framing of the European question left a deep imprint on the political class and public opinion: ‘Are we going to let our sovereignty and our identity dissolve in Europe as a lump of sugar in a cup of coffee?’ Klaus’s formula is clearly part of the mindset of the new government. Today there is nobody who is making a convincing pro-European argument, which suggests there will be little opposition to Andrej Babis’s brand of Euroscepticism. The defeated Fiala government started out as being Euro-pragmatic and became more engaged with the EU project as geopolitical circumstances changed. Compared to Orbán or to Kaczynski’s PiS, Babis remains a ‘soft’ Eurosceptic. With an aggressive posture towards the judiciary and public broadcasting media, his election victory is definitely not good news for Czech democracy. And it is clearly bad news for Ukraine and the European ‘coalition of the willing’ of which the Czech Republic was an active part.

However, there are reasons to believe that the triumph of a Eurosceptic populist is likely to weaken but not destabilize institutions of liberal democracy at home, and it will marginalize though not actually jeopardize the country’s place in Europe.

First, and most importantly, an election in the Czech Republic, unlike an election in Moldova, is a choice of government, not of regime. Even Babis’s harshest critics only mention ‘risks’ to liberal governance, not actual threats of regime change like those made by his associates Slovakia’s Fico or Hungary’s Orbán. There will be polemics over the judiciary’s recent reopening (after a previous acquittal) of his indictment for embezzlement of European funds, there will be attacks on the independence of the media, but regime change à la Trump seems unlikely. Some explanations for this concern Czech democracy, others Babis himself.

Czechs have possibly the strongest democratic tradition in Central Europe. In the inter-war period, when the region gradually succumbed to authoritarian or crypto-fascist regimes, it remained the only democracy, until it was abandoned to Hitler at Munich in September 1938. It has developed consolidated democratic institutions since 1989, held five elections in which power changed hands, and developed rule-of-law institutions with a truly independent and respected constitutional court that no politician has dared to challenge overtly.

Then there is Babis and his brand of populism. Babis is not an ideologue like Kaczynski or Orbán, nor a radical like Fico. He is a businessman who prefers a pragmatic, transactional approach. He could be described as an ‘entrepreneurial populist’, who first became a media entrepreneur and since 2012 a political entrepreneur. In the Berlusconi mould, if you wish. His party is called ANO which means ‘yes’, but yes to what? It is not spelt out because it is essentially yes to him! He sees parliament as a ‘talking shop’. The state ‘should be run like a company’. He is a strong leader with a toxic dose of defiance vis-à vis the parliament and the judiciary but he does not fit into the Right/Left divide that has prevailed in Czech politics in the 2000s, so he can move in different directions from a centrist would-be anticorruption movement, which joined ALDE liberals in the European Parliament, or the conservative nationalist posture of the ‘Patriots’.

In this respect ANO is not unlike Slovakia’s ruling party Smer, meaning ‘direction’, although in his first election victory twenty years ago Fico did not indicate which direction. Later Fico turned to social democracy and now he has reinvented himself by joining Orbán’s right-wing nationalist Patriots. The direction is wherever the leader believes the political winds are blowing.¹ This is a common feature in the initial success of both a Czech and a Slovak populist leader.

The electoral victory of Andrej Babis points to a recasting of the Central European political landscape. It confirms the (temporary) demise of the Visegrad group after the overt split between the Polish and Hungarian prime ministers over ‘illiberal democracy’ and Russia’s war in Ukraine. The new constellation brings together a variety of right-wing Eurosceptic populists from Czechia, Slovakia, Austria and Hungary. The nationalists undid the Austro-Hungarian Empire more than a century ago; now, together, they oppose the European Union, which for Central Europe has become a substitute for Empire.