Czechia’s largest opposition party, billionaire ex-prime minister Andrej Babiš’ populist ANO, is widely expected to win the parliamentary elections scheduled for October 3-4. This would be a remarkable comeback after Babiš was narrowly ousted by a bloc of pro-Western parties in 2021 on the back of mass protests against his cabinet.

With ANO’s return looking highly likely, the question now is what direction the party will lead Czechia in. Specifically, whether Czechia will join its neighbour Slovakia and Hungary in challenging EU values and the bloc’s support for Ukraine. 

This is already a topic of discussion, with liberal President Petr Pavel saying he considers it a possibility. “It would be irresponsible if I said there is no danger,” Pavel responded last week in a debate at Harvard University, as quoted by Euractiv, when asked whether there is “a danger the Czech Republic heads into the populist and anti-European direction like Slovakia or Hungary?”

During the debate, Pavel highlighted that Babiš is “not against the EU or against Nato”, as Czech Radio (CRo) reported, but he warned about the parties courting ANO to form the next cabinet, which he described as “openly extremist” or as “being close to it”, noting that “one said it wants a referendum on staying or leaving Nato” — a reference to the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD). 

Move to the right 

Following his historic victory in the Czech elections to the European Parliament in June 2024, Babiš has steered his ANO into national conservative waters. ANO became one of the founding parties of the Patriots for Europe European Parliament grouping, together with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidész and Herbert Kickl’s Freedom Party of Austria (FPO).

However, Babiš’s food, agricultural and chemical conglomerate Agrofert remains a consumer of EU funds. Online news outlet Novinky.cz wrote earlier this week that agricultural subsidies represent one per cent of the overall income of Agrofert, whose net profit rose to CZK7.1bn last year. 

Babiš himself stressed he wants to “change the European politics” to “prioritise national sovereignty over federalism, freedom over orders, peace over war” when the Patriots grouping was formed. 

Despite ANO’s visible opposition to the current European Commission, such as when Babiš called the new system of emission allowances the “Brussels monstrosity” in his August commentary for iDnes.cz, there are no signs yet that the party has ambitions to dismantle the EU or take Czechia out of the bloc. Its policy might, however, harden depending on its choice of coalition partner. 

Heading for victory 

Although the latest polls show ANO dropped below 30% support, the party still maintains a nearly 10 percentage point lead ahead of the Spolu coalition led by incumbent PM Petr Fiala. Ahead of the upcoming vote, that raises the question of with whom Babiš will be able to form the ruling majority in the next parliament, and whether this will include radical right-wing and ultranationalist parties. 

In the latest poll by the STEM agency, the SPD sits third at 13.4%, ahead of the junior ruling party, centrist STAN (11.7%), and the liberal Pirate Party (10.1%). This makes a coalition with SPD a possible option for ANO, though it still does not guarantee a majority of over 100 legislators in the Czech parliament of 200.

SPD leaders, including its chairman Tomio Okamura, have repeatedly called for “Czexit”, which would be nothing short of a tragedy for the heavily export-oriented Czech economy.

Among the other parties likely to be in the next parliament, the leaders of the current ruling coalition parties, Fiala and STAN’s Vít Rakušan, have recently reiterated that they won’t seek post-election collaboration with ANO. 

ANO could thus be pushed into a multi-party coalition with other anti-establishment and anti-green parties, including the Kremlin-leaning Stačilo! coalition or the Motorists for themselves. Both parties hover just above the 5% at 5.5% and 5.9%, respectively, making their presence in the next parliament likely, but not certain yet.  

Babiš himself previously stressed his goal is for ANO to rule alone, while his deputy Karel Havlíček did not rule out replacing Babiš as the next prime minister. This prompted more speculation that controversy-stricken Babiš stepping aside — the politician is standing trial in a subsidy fraud case — could pave the way for negotiations with one of the ruling parties, and a more moderate populist cabinet could still emerge from the October elections.

Position on Ukraine 

Even if ANO pursues its version of moderate populism, not challenging Czechia’s existing EU and Nato memberships, it is unclear what impact the composition of the next parliament will have on the country’s media landscape and its foreign policies, including backing for Ukraine. Babiš alleged that Czechia was being "dragged into war" already last year, as bne IntelliNews reported.

Babiš has stated several times that he would scrap the Czech initiative of collecting and sending ammunition from within and outside the EU to Ukraine. However, both Havlíček and Babiš also said they would prefer Nato to take over the initiative, citing anti-corruption reports about the overpricing of ammunition for Ukraine. 

However, ANO’s potential coalition partner, SPD's Okamura, has called for a review of resident permits for Ukrainians sheltered in Czechia, which is the largest per capita host country of Ukrainians fleeing the Russian ground invasion and relentless aerial attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.  

Babiš's return could also embolden the country’s powerful top businessmen, some of whom have previously thrived on business and energy ties with Russia, to exercise their influence on Czech politics and push for a more relaxed approach to the implementation of anti-Russian sanctions on the national, or even EU level.  

A related issue is disinformation and the plurality of Czechia’s media. As bne IntelliNews covered earlier this year, both ANO and SPD have delayed new media legislation aimed at financially stabilising public media, and vowed to reopen the legislation. Babiš even called for the merging of the Czech Television (CT) and CRo, which prompted fears among journalists that this would give the next government control over the public media.

Media analysts also fear that already fragile efforts by Czech officials to combat disinformation and foreign propaganda would be shelved altogether under ANO's watch. 

“Disinformation servers in Czechia pour out daily an amount of articles surpassing the largest Czech media houses,” Czech foreign news website Voxpot reported earlier this month as part of their data investigation into disinformation in the country. The website also accused Fiala's cabinet of inaction, even though the cabinet has the power to exercise sanction mechanisms against outlets with documented links to the Kremlin.    

If ANO strikes a post-election agreement with some or all of the SPD, Stačilo or the Motorists trio, Czech NGOs, many of which are active in the EU's Eastern Partnership and Western Balkan programmes, fear a slashing of funding would follow.

In the foreign policy front, Babiš has openly sought an alliance with Orbán and Robert Fico’s government in Bratislava. Besides co-founding the Patriots for Europe, he campaigned next to Hungary's anti-immigration fences and endorsed Fico's Smer party in Bratislava during the 2023 Slovak elections, which returned Smer to power. 

ANO’s October victory could tempt Orbán to renew efforts on the V4 platform cooperation under his national conservative agenda, though it is questionable how effective such cooperation would be without Poland, whose population is larger than that of Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia combined.