Election preview: Czechia

After Sunday’s unexpected landslide in Moldova, another big electoral test comes to Europe tomorrow when Czechia (also called the Czech Republic) goes to the polls to pass judgement on its pro-western coalition government, elected four years ago. Its prospects are uncertain but not hopeless.

The 2021 election result was pretty straightforward. Four tickets won seats (there’s a 5% threshold for representation): the then-incumbents, ANO (centrist-populist), with 72; an alliance of three centre-right parties, Spolu, with 71; Pirates/STAN (liberal-centrist – STAN are mayors and independents) with 37; and the far-right SPD with 20. Spolu and Pirates/STAN combined to oust the ANO government and Spolu leader Petr Fiala became prime minister.

It’s been a tumultuous four years in central Europe, but the fundamentals in Czechia haven’t changed much. A presidential election in 2023 saw the erratic Trumpist Miloš Zeman replaced by former general and Spolu ally Petr Pavel, defeating ANO leader Andrej Babiš. Then last year the Pirates left the government after a poor performance in regional elections; they and STAN are now running separate tickets.

The same parties all look like returning to parliament. ANO is leading in the polls with around 30%, about ten points ahead of Spolu. SPD and STAN are both in the low teens, with the Pirates a couple of points further back. Two new tickets are also polling just above the threshold: the Motorists, a slightly more moderate far-right party, and Stačilo! (“Enough!”), a rebranding of the old Communist Party.

Voting is mostly proportional (not quite: last time Spolu slightly outvoted ANO but won one less seat – this post from 2017 discusses the detail), so on those numbers it looks bad for the government. Even assuming (as seems likely) that the Pirates can be enticed back, the three parties are on track for somewhere in the low 40s between them, and it will be hard to translate that into a majority. But if they can outperform their polls a bit, as the pro-Europeans did in Moldova, it’s still within reach.

If they fall short, that’s where the fun starts. ANO is basically Babiš’s personal vehicle; he has never held to a consistent ideological line, having at different times worked with both left and right, but in the last few years he has veered towards a far-right Putinist position. SPD and Stačilo! are also pro-Russian (indeed, rather more so), raising the spectre of a Russia-friendly coalition.

But such a coalition would probably also need the votes of the Motorists, who, although they are Eurosceptic and opposed to climate science, are otherwise conventional free-marketers; they are unlikely to be sympathetic to Putin and would be particularly hostile to co-operation with Stačilo! For that matter, Stačilo! and SPD, although their policy positions might sound similar, are deadly enemies (think AfD and BSW in Germany): it’s hard to imagine them sitting in government together, and a minority ANO government depending on both of them would be hopelessly unstable.

And Babiš himself has disowned the more radical policies of his possible partners, saying that he is pro-European Union and pro-NATO. But he and Spolu have categorically ruled out working with each other, so it’s hard to see where the votes for a mainstream government are going to come from. Fiala has taken a strongly pro-Ukraine position, in stark contrast to neighboring Hungary and Slovakia; that may now be at risk.

The other thing to take into account is the president’s role. Although the system is parliamentary, Zeman as president often tried to stretch his powers and clashed at times with his governments, although he played by the rules in appointing Fiala (and later renounced his pro-Russian views after the invasion of Ukraine). Pavel has also suggested that he has a discretion to refuse to appoint anti-EU ministers, and that this stretches to concerns about Babiš.

It’s unlikely that he would directly veto a prime minister, but in an ambiguous parliamentary situation the president may well be able to use his influence to produce a government that avoids being in hock to the extremists. Or failing that, to send the Czechs back to the polls.