The Czech parliamentary elections, explained

Andrej Babiš's populist, 'catch-all' ANO are very likely to win, but big questions remain about how they can form a government

The upcoming Czech parliamentary elections on 3 and 4 October are spoken of by their lead protagonists in almost existential terms. For Petr Fiala, Prime Minister since 2021 and leader of the governing Spolu (‘Together’) coalition, they will determine whether the country will be part of the West and maintain its imperfect, but functional, system of parliamentary democracy, or whether it will turn eastwards under a government of ‘populists and extremists’. Meanwhile, for frontrunner Andrej Babiš, the former Prime Minister (2017-2021) and leader of the populist ANO party, they represent a chance to get rid of a government that is leading the country to total ruin, especially due to their stance on the Ukraine War.

In reality, the stakes are not quite so existential. As the Pimlico Journal has written before, Czech apathy and pragmatism have resulted in a country that is relatively well-off economically whilst succumbing neither to the siren song of mass migration and social extremism nor to the post-liberal politics of Orbán’s Hungary, Fico’s Slovakia, or PiS’s Poland. That is not to say that these elections could not still prove pivotal in shaping the country’s future orientation, though, especially if Babiš’s ANO choose to govern with the support of radical nationalists and/or unreformed Communists, as seems plausible under current polling.

Background

Until 2010, the Czech Republic was known for its stable party system. Unlike fellow post-Communist countries like Poland and Slovakia, where parties rose and fell with regularity, the Czech system was fairly static and easy to make sense of.

Following the 1996 elections, the defining clash in Czech politics was between the centre-right ODS (Civic Democratic Party) and the centre-left ČSSD (Czech Social Democratic Party). KDU-ČSL (Christian and Democratic Union — Czechoslovak People’s Party) played the role of kingmaker: as centrists, they were able to ally with either of the two main parties. KSČM (Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia), the direct successor to the pre-1989 Communist Party, received between eleven and eighteen percent of the vote in every election until 2017, but was subject to a cordon sanitaire by the other parties, locking it out of power. Parliament was often rounded out by a ‘flavour of the week’ liberal party, like the Freedom Union or the Greens, who appealed to the big-city elites but tended to quickly fade. ČSSD and ODS continually traded the premiership, with no Prime Minister being reelected apart from Václav Klaus in 1996.

The 2010 election marked the first rupture in the system. In the midst of the Great Recession, two new parties entered parliament: the centre-right TOP 09 (‘Tradition Responsibility Prosperity’), a split from KDU-ČSL but led by the aristocratic Karel Schwarzenberg, a respected diplomat with ties to Václav Havel; and VV (‘Public Affairs’), an anti-corruption party. The two main parties suffered heavy losses, but ODS was still able to form a coalition government under Petr Nečas with the support of the two new parties, and they quickly set about consolidating the public finances. Front-loading austerity, the Nečas Government was deeply unpopular but still not unlikely to win reelection as they planned to turn on the spending taps in their final year. This was not to be: in 2013, Nečas, a technocrat with a squeaky-clean reputation, was accused of misconduct and corruption. He was having an affair with one of his aides, who allegedly used the intelligence services to spy on his wife. Three days after the police arrested the aide and several MPs, Nečas resigned. To this day, some ODS loyalists maintain that the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office overreached and that Nečas should not have resigned.

The early election that followed Nečas’s resignation was fought on very different grounds than previous elections, and can reasonably be considered the turning point in modern Czech political history. The issue of corruption was at the forefront of the public’s mind, and two new parties entered parliament on this surge of public feeling: Andrej Babiš’s ANO (lit. ‘Yes’), founded in 2011, and Tomio Okamura’s personal vehicle Úsvit (‘Dawn’), founded in 2013, which would later become the far-right SPD (‘Freedom and Direct Democracy’) following a split in 2015. Both Babiš and Okamura are still leading their respective political parties in 2025.

Babiš is a Slovak-born billionaire and one of the Czech Republic’s richest men, with an estimated net worth of $4.3 billion. His father was a communist apparatchik and he was educated in Paris and Geneva. In the ’80s, Babiš was a Communist Party member and an agent of the StB (the Czechoslovak equivalent of the Stasi). During the economic boom of the ’90s, Babiš acquired (by dubious means) Agrofert, a conglomerate with interests in food, chemicals, and agriculture, and built it up to become one of the country’s largest companies. In 2011, Babiš founded ANO. ‘ANO’, as well as meaning ‘yes’ in Czech, is also a backronym for ‘Action of Dissatisfied Citizens’ (Akce nespokojených občanů). Pointedly, ANO was not a political party, but instead at first registered only as a ‘movement’. Babiš railed against ODS corruption, promising to ‘run the state like a firm’ (the general notion of using the market as a bludgeon against corruption is common across Eastern Europe as well as Italy). In 2013, he brought a new professionalism to Czech politics: his billboards, depicting him tieless in a white shirt, dotted the country, and he was helped by expensive American political consultants as well as the fact that he had purchased some of the country’s largest newspapers and radio stations. ANO’s candidates were drawn from outside politics, often from Agrofert or other businesses, and were presented as being non-political ‘experts’.

ANO’s platform was neither Left or Right, but instead a strange kind of technocratic populism. Still, broadly speaking, it offered more appeal to traditional right-wing voters due to its emphasis on business. ANO came second in the 2013 election, winning 18.6% of the vote and 47 of 200 seats, primarily drawing support from disappointed centre-right ODS voters and the anti-corruption mood prevalent in the country. The problem with corruption was, it should be noted, largely overstated: while by no means free of corruption, the Czech Republic was much less corrupt than countries like Romania, Italy, and Greece, at least according to Transparency International. Moreover, whilst Babiš did not have ties to the ruling political parties, his business dealings raised serious questions about conflict of interest.

ANO was still beaten by the centre-left ČSSD, which won 20.4% of the vote and 50 seats. The momentum was nonetheless on ANO’s side, as this was down from 22% and 56 seats in 2010. ODS went into free fall, and was overtaken by TOP 09 as the largest centre-right force: ODS saw their share of the vote fall from just over 20% (53 seats) to under 8% (16 seats). TOP 09, while now the biggest centre-right party, also suffered from an adverse swing, winning 12% of the vote and 26 seats, against 16% and 42 seats three years prior. Okamura’s Dawn saw enough success to enter Parliament, with 6.9% of the vote; KSČM won nearly 15% of the vote but, as ever, remained locked out of power.

The new government — a coalition of ČSSD, ANO, and KDU-ČSL — was led by the hapless ČSSD leader Bohuslav Sobotka, with ANO’s Babiš chosen as Finance Minister, still free to pursue his business interests, and KDU-ČSL playing their traditional role as coalition partner. Throughout their time in government, ANO was able to suck up most of ČSSD’s support, in another case of Pasokification (i.e., the decline of social democratic parties across Europe since 2010). Babiš was clearly the most powerful man in government, with Sobotka too weak to get rid of him until he was charged with EU subsidy fraud in the Stork’s Nest case (in which Babiš allegedly obtained subsidies intended only for SMEs by disguising the true ownership of the business receiving the funds; the case is still ongoing today). ANO moved leftwards throughout their time in government, with Babiš increasing welfare and pensions. This meant that the party’s voter base shifted significantly: what was originally pitched as a business-friendly party instead began to draw support from the less educated, the rural, and the elderly who stuck with Babiš through thick and thin.

ANO easily won the next election in 2017, with nearly 30% of the vote; the second-placed ODS, now led by Petr Fiala, won just 11% of the vote. That year, the vote was heavily split, and a record nine parties entered parliament, the other seven parties being (in order of vote share) the Pirates, SPD, KSČM, ČSSD, KDU-ČSL, TOP 09, and Mayors. Fiala, an academic and former education minister untarnished by the Nečas scandal, had brought the party back from the brink and staved off potential bankruptcy, besting their main centre-right competitor TOP 09 (which fell to just 5.3% of the vote) in the process.

The Pirates came in third place. The Pirates are an oddity in European politics. Whilst parties under similar labels exist across Europe, the only countries other than the Czech Republic where they have won representation in the national legislature are Iceland and Luxembourg. Focusing on digital rights and anti-corruption, the party was favoured by the young and urban. It was progressive, but not so left-wing that it would scare off young professionals who, like in most of Eastern Europe, are generally both socially and economically liberal.

Babiš formed a coalition with ČSSD, which suffered a huge adverse swing of over 13 percentage points and was reduced to being a junior coalition partner and, most controversially of all, obtained a confidence and supply agreement with the Communists. There were frequent protests against Babiš during his time as Prime Minister: a large part of the population was outraged that a former StB agent was leading a government with KSČM support thirty years after the Velvet Revolution. Babiš’s corruption was also a target of opposition ire. The man who ran on an anti-corruption platform was now engaging in it at a high level, using the levers of government to favour his businesses and clamp down on competition. A further scandal came to light in 2018 when Babiš’s son alleged that he had been kidnapped by men working for his father and taken to Crimea to obstruct the investigation of the aforementioned Stork’s Nest case. Although the protests did not make Babiš step down, they galvanised the opposition and provided them with momentum going into 2021. Babiš was also hindered by his response to COVID-19: despite his early boasts that the country was ‘best in Covid’, by 2021, death rates were some of the worst in Europe.

In many respects, 2025 is simply a repeat of what happened in 2021, but with the role of incumbent and opposition switched.

In 2021, Babiš’s incumbent ANO were faced by two ‘anti-populist’ coalition blocs. The early challenger to Babiš was Pirates and the Mayors (PirStan). This was a somewhat incongruous marriage of convenience between the aforementioned Pirates and a newish party, STAN (‘Mayors and Independents’). STAN are a sort of secular, liberal KDU-ČSL, drawing support from the middle classes in medium-sized cities and willing to ally with anyone who can secure funds for their local patronage networks. The other coalition was Spolu, an alliance between ODS, TOP 09, and KDU-ČSL, headed by ODS’s Fiala. The opposition realised that they needed to unite their forces and present a coherent alternative to the dominant ANO. Rather than staying as five different parties all hovering between 5% and 10%, they became — in effect — two parties that could plausibly win 25% or more of the vote.

In the summer of 2021, PirStan were riding high in the polls, with their dreadlocked leader Ivan Bartoš swanning around European capitals in ill-fitting suits pretending to be a prospective Prime Minister. However, ANO’s campaign apparatus soon kicked into gear with an all-out campaign against the Pirates, linking them to antifa and accusing them of wanting to steal your holiday home and fill it with migrants.

The public soon soured on the Pirates, but their lost support did not translate neatly into ANO votes. Instead, Babiš softened them up and allowed Fiala to hoover up centre-right voters who were put off by the Pirates. In the debates, Fiala gave the impression that he was fundamentally serious, speaking with professorial diction, in sharp contrast to Babiš’s frantic, Slovak-accented Czech. Hitting Babiš on the chaotic COVID response as well as inflation, which had been exacerbated by the government’s high spending, Spolu gained in the last few weeks of the campaign, ultimately besting ANO in terms of votes (27.79% against 27.13%) and almost equalling them in terms of seats (72 against 71). PirStan came third (15.62% and 37 seats), followed by Tomio Okamura’s far-right SPD (9.56% and 20 seats). Another strategic mistake made by Babiš was to once again drain votes from potential coalition partners — the Czech Republic’s two historic left-wing parties, ČSSD and KSČM, fell below the 5% barrier for parliamentary representation for the first time — leaving him with no one to govern with.

Czech elections operate on a PR system but with open lists, meaning that voters can give preference votes to their favoured candidates and move them up. One of Spolu’s strengths was the synergy between the members of the electoral alliance, with KDU-ČSL gaining support in Moravia, TOP 09 dominating in Prague, and ODS — being one of the few parties with a solid membership and structure — taking the rest of the country. Preference voting decimated the Pirates because cautious voters circled STAN candidates, rocketing them up the list. In the end, it was a massacre for the Pirates: even though the PirStan electoral alliance actually won a fairly impressive 37 seats, and was headed by a Pirate, of these seats the Pirates only won 4, compared to STAN’s 33.

A hasty coalition was then formed between the five so-called democratic parties — the biggest coalition in Czech history — and Fiala was reluctantly named Prime Minister by President Miloš Zeman. It should be noted here that Zeman, despite being the centre-left ČSSD Prime Minister from 1998 to 2002 who was responsible for overseeing the Czech Republic’s entry into NATO (and giving his approval for the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, being the last leader to do so), has increasingly taken anti-immigration, anti-Islam, anti-LGBT, and moderately pro-Russia and pro-China stances since becoming President in 2013. Zeman stepped down as President after the end of his second term in 2023 and was replaced by Petr Pavel, who is aligned with Spolu and is strongly anti-Russian.

Where things stand today

Spolu

Spolu are a much-weakened force after four years of government. Hovering at around 20% in the polls, much of their loss in support is, simply put, due to their governing record. Like most of Europe, the problems they faced in office centred around COVID-19, the fiscal situation that resulted from the response to it, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the energy crisis that followed.

Foreign policy matters are central in this election, and much of your opinion of Fiala will hinge on your opinion of his response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Under Fiala’s watch, the Czech Republic took in the highest number of Ukrainian immigrants per capita in Europe. These immigrants, who were mostly women and children, joined an established Ukrainian community and have helped fill labour shortages. In 2025, these refugees are receiving little in state benefits, and the government claims that they are overall a net fiscal positive for the country. By contrast, non-European immigration has remained relatively low compared to many of the Czech Republic’s neighbours. Opting for immigration from Ukraine rather than, say, India and Nepal, as many other Eastern European countries were increasingly doing at this time, will likely prove to be far-sighted. Fiala was also the first head of state to visit Kiev after the invasion, and the government’s support for Ukraine has continued in the form of the ammunition initiative. One of Spolu’s main policy planks is increasing defence spending, much to the delight of Russia hawks and the country’s substantial arms manufacturing sector.

On the other hand, weaning the Czech Republic off of Russian gas, on which it was 97% dependent prior to the war, has proven costly and is still incomplete. It should be remembered that the Czech Republic is still a highly industrialised country. This made it all the more damaging that despite being a net energy exporter, the country suffered from some of the highest energy prices in Europe: by way of comparison, UK energy inflation between February 2022 and February 2023 was 51%, whilst the Czech Republic’s was ‘only’ 35%; however, because Czech households spend more on energy than British households, they lost an average of 3.5% of their disposable income from this increase, as compared to the British loss of 2.4%. The rapid increase in energy prices was coupled with the general inflation that followed the worldwide fiscal incontinence of the Pandemic, peaking at 18%. The backlash was immediate, and anti-war protests organised by pro-Russian groups started very shortly after the invasion of Ukraine.

The response of the government to the fiscal situation was one of consolidation: taxes were increased, despite this being a centre-right coalition that explicitly ran on a low tax platform, and what spending there was mostly went towards dealing with the energy crisis. That is not to say that the government has no concrete achievements. Pension reform, a simmering issue in Czech politics, was effectively carried out. Road-building has been much higher than under the previous government. But there are surely less achievements than Spolu would have liked going into their reelection campaign.

Many of Spolu’s difficulties come from Fiala’s leadership style. His consensual approach has kept four of the five parties in the coalition (the Pirates left in September 2024), and the government has been largely scandal-free, with the exception of a bitcoin-related scandal which blunted Spolu’s momentum going into the summer. But while this approach has seemingly kept his colleagues happy, it has been much less successful with the general public. The government is among the most unpopular in Europe, and many voters find Fiala’s reserved personality and unapologetically academic tone distant and grating.

The Spolu campaign has been, at best, a mixed bag. Primarily focussed on governing, they allowed the opposition to control the media space in recent years. Anti-government sentiment was therefore allowed to fester unaddressed. The novelty that the alliance had in 2021 has worn off, and many of their former voters are now unenthusiastic and contemplating staying at home. While their campaign has improved somewhat in the final weeks, it seems unlikely that there was enough time for Spolu to turn things around.

ANO

ANO are by far the leading opposition party, with their support peaking at around 35% at the beginning of this year, before falling somewhat to the low thirties. There is no doubt that Babiš is a skilled and active campaigner who has managed to use a combination of online platforms — including TikTok (where paid influencers infamously called him a ‘Sigma’) — as well as more old-fashioned methods to reach voters. Whilst ANO are likely to win the election, their path to forming a government is much trickier, given proportional representation and their lack of obvious coalition partners.

Babiš has once again showed his chameleonic qualities, transforming the ideological positioning of his movement for the third time. If in 2013 ANO was a business-friendly party focused on anti-corruption, and in 2017 and 2021 it was a centre-left welfarist party mostly targeting pensioners, in 2025 it has now shifted to the Right; nowadays, Babiš cheerfully calls ANO a ‘catch-all party’.

Although Babiš — like virtually every Czech politician (including the Pirates) — had always expressed opposition to illegal migration and Islam, from 2021 this position began to distinctly harden. In 2022, Babiš launched a quixotic run for the Presidency which, with its two-round system, proved too much for him to overcome. He was soundly defeated in the run-off by the Spolu-aligned retired general and NATO Military Committee Chairman Petr Pavel, who won over 58% of the vote in the election itself in 2023. It was in this campaign that Babiš greatly ramped up his anti-NATO and anti-Ukrainian rhetoric, something he had previously been reluctant to do, and took a more Orbán-adjacent position. This continued into ANO’s winning EU Parliament campaign in which they promised that Czechs would not be forced to ‘Eat the Bugs’. Later, ANO was involved in the formation of a new radical-right grouping in EU Parliament, Patriots for Europe, which includes Hungary’s Fidesz, France’s National Rally, and Spain’s Vox. All of this was a rather abrupt volte-face from ANO’s previous membership of ALDE, the liberal grouping (even if it must be admitted that ANO’s membership of ALDE was always somewhat uncomfortable), and Babiš’s boasting about his personal relationship with Emmanuel Macron.

This ideological shift has helped to break the old left-right divide in Czech politics. Many ODS and Spolu voters don’t see Babiš as a right-wing figure, given his Communist past and left-leaning economic policy; meanwhile, the opposition bloc voters often see Fiala as a wishy-washy liberal, rather the head of a conservative party (as he is supposed to be). It should, however, also be stressed that the dividing lines in this election are still mostly on foreign policy. While the culture war does exist to some extent, the battle lines are not nearly as clear as they are with foreign policy: no major party is fully Woke; it is more of a question of emphasis.

SPD

In third place in the polls is SPD (‘Freedom and Direct Democracy’), led by politician and entrepreneur Tomio Okamura.

Okamura is an amusing figure: he’s half Japanese, and made his name by being a judge on the Czech version of Dragon’s Den. If ANO is at heart a true populist party with a dash of radical right thrown in, then SPD is the real deal: anti-Islam, anti-vaccine, anti-Ukraine, anti-EU, and anti-NATO, they’ve never been in government but have consistently registered around 10% in the polls.

Okamura has proved to be a remarkably resilient figure in Czech politics. After a disappointing election result in the European elections in 2024, after which it looked like the SPD might fade into irrelevance after winning a mere 5.7% of the vote, Okamura has managed to turn things around. The SPD formed an electoral alliance — despite the fact he had previously called the Spolu alliance a fraud on the voters — with three other marginal right-wing groups, and has increased their support to around 12%. Okamura’s provocative campaigning, which included an AI-generated billboard of an African man wielding a bloody machete with the caption ‘We don’t need more foreign doctors’, has gotten him in legal trouble, but they remain a possible coalition partner for ANO.

The problem is that their red lines of a referendum on EU and NATO membership — something that ANO have already rejected — will likely be too much for Babiš to swallow. The question is whether these red lines actually hold, as it seems like the party has a real desire to govern after years in opposition.

STAN and the Pirates

In 2021, STAN and the Pirates ran together in the PirStan alliance. This time, they are running separately, but I will deal with them together in this section.

STAN had a slight chance of leading the government camp into the election in the brief moment when Spolu’s support hit its nadir; however, they were unable to seize the opportunity that had presented itself. In this election, they’ve ultimately returned to their liberal comfort zone, running a so-called ‘good campaign’ without any negative campaigning, and focussing on issues that are irrelevant to most Czechs, like euthanasia and gay marriage. They are currently polling at around 10%, fighting with the SPD for third place.

The Pirates have ditched STAN after the disaster in 2021, and instead formed an electoral alliance with the Green Party. This lifted them from just above the 5% threshold to about 8%, meaning that they are now unlikely to lose their parliamentary representation unless the polls are badly wrong. They are, however, bruised from their time in government, which raised serious questions about their competence: for instance, they were unable to complete the digitalisation of the planning system or the legislation of marijuana, the two areas where they were meant to excel. An energetic campaign by former Prague mayor and new party leader Zdeněk Hřib has nonetheless made them an option for liberal voters who are unable to stomach voting for Spolu for whatever reason.

Stačilo! and Motorists for Themselves

Two other parties that have a chance to get into Parliament are Stačilo! (‘Enough!’) and Motorists for Themselves. Stačilo is currently at around 7% in the polls, whilst the Motorists are flitting between each side of the 5% threshold. Both parties, while very different from each other, represent possible coalition partners for ANO, but they also represent a big risk for the opposition camp, as if both fall below 5% it could mean that Fiala is able to form his five-party coalition and lock ANO out of power, repeating what occurred in 2021.

Stačilo, established in 2023, were yet another electoral alliance, an increasing trend in Czech politics (and one that is largely negative, as it resuscitates parties that should have naturally died), though they have now become a fully-fledged political party to avoid the higher threshold imposed on electoral alliances. They are composed of the remnants of KSČM, who are clearly the main players in the grouping, along with a few minor parties, including SOCDEM, the 2023 relaunch of the nearly-dead ČSSD. Although many hoped that the Communists would be out of Parliament for good after their disastrous performance in 2021, a young telegenic leader and some clever rebranding meant that they performed surprisingly well in the 2024 EU elections, in which they won almost 7% of the vote, and their support has remained rather steady since.

Whilst Stačilo’s policies are what you would expect from a mostly unreformed Communist party — anti-EU, anti-NATO, pro-nationalisation (these foreign policy stances being despite the involvement of the previously strongly pro-European ČSSD/SOCDEM) — they also highlight a growing trend in the opposition camp. Stačilo is, in some respects, what might be described as a ‘red-brown alliance’. This means that despite their nominally left-wing or even far-left positioning, candidates who could reasonably be described as nationalist or even far-right appear on their list. In terms of their support, it is still drawn mostly from nostalgic pensioners, but also people involved in conspiracy theories and the like.

The Motorists are another new party, founded in 2022. Formed by associates of the Václav Klaus (Prime Minister, 1993-98, President, 2003-13), formerly of ODS, they mainly appeal to dissatisfied ODS voters who, like Klaus, think that the Spolu project has taken the party much too far from its conservative principles. The Motorists are heavily reliant on the charismatic personality of Filip Turek, who led them to their previous success in the European Parliament elections, in which they won 10% of the vote. Turek is almost a kind of Andrew Tate figure, but more Aryan: he’s a square-jawed, masculine car enthusiast (and former competitive racing driver) who thrives in the short-form video; men want to be him, women want to be with him. Yet Turek’s various controversies — his Nazi memorabilia collection, rape allegations, and speeding tickets — have blunted the appeal of the Motorists, limiting their outreach to many of the kind of people who might vote for them (i.e., right-wing, anti-Spolu voters who for whatever reason dislike ANO). The party is trying to straddle the line between the two camps as they promise to ‘get rid of Fiala, and keep an eye on Babiš’.

The Motorists would probably be the most comfortable partner for ANO, but it seems unlikely that this two-party coalition will be enough for a majority (and that’s assuming they even get into Parliament, which is itself an open question). However, a possible spanner in the works for any three-party or four-party coalition is that the Motorists reject any coalition with the Communists.

What will happen?

There is much uncertainty around the election given the tight margins and protracted post-election wrangling that will likely be involved. Whilst the polls have been mostly static in recent months, Fiala has a reputation for finishing strong, and ANO and SDP often under-perform their polls. That said, ANO still seems very likely to win — but whether they will be able to form a government is another question.

As the campaign reaches its conclusion, Spolu seem to be gaining somewhat, as Fiala’s strategy of holding rallies in towns and cities has finally started paying off. Videos of elderly Communists and skinheads abusing Fiala whilst he calmly stands his ground have gone viral — but still, it all seems to be too little, too late. The government’s last hope is that is to polarise the electorate against not only Babiš, but even more so the possibility of SPD and/or Stačilo in government. On the other side, Babiš has to hope for as many parties to enter parliament as possible to give him viable coalition partners.

How ANO will behave after the election is anyone’s guess. Babiš is highly adept at being all things to all people, and ANO forming a ‘basically fine’ minority government and continuing the country mostly on the same track is entirely possible. Babiš has now publicly ruled out a coalition with the Communists, though we will see if this will hold. His business interests alone mean that he is unlikely to go into a full-scale, unadulterated anti-system coalition with SPD and Stačilo, with all that would entail: Okamura as Interior Minister, the Communists in charge of Defence, and so on. But there is also no guarantee that he will not go down a more moderate Fico/Orbán route either, given his apparent radicalisation in recent years (whether sincere or not).

The President, Petr Pavel, also represents an obstacle for ANO. The Czech system is, of course, fundamentally one dominated by Parliament, not the President. Pavel has not exercised his (limited) executive power to a great extent thus far, and has described ANO as a ‘democratic’ party (therefore declining to completely delegitimise it as a political force). However, ultimately, the President still names the Prime Minister. The prospect of an ANO-led coalition which includes SPD and/or Stačilo would raise many questions for him and his associates.

For Fiala, victory is probably not on the cards, but there is perhaps a small chance that if everything goes his way, he could remain in office. But if his reelection efforts fail, as seems very likely, it would probably mean the demise of the whole Spolu project and the resignation of Fiala as ODS leader, followed by a long period of reorganisation amongst the so-called ‘democratic’ forces.

Fiala’s resignation and the collapse of Spolu, or an underperformance on the part of STAN, also raise another possibility: that one of the governing parties could join an ANO government. Whilst all of the parties in the governing coalition publicly reject this prospect, as does Babiš himself, there is a chance that this stance will not be able to hold given what is likely to be extremely difficult parliamentary arithmetic and the obvious undesirability of ANO’s other potential coalition partners. ODS, or more likely STAN or KDU-ČSL, could make a ‘sacrifice’ for the ‘greater good’ to stop the SPD and/or Stačilo from coming to power. Such an arrangement may prove beneficial to Babiš — they would certainly be easier to govern with than the alternatives — but it may also rely on Babiš retreating to a more behind-the-scenes role and appointing a puppet as Prime Minister à la Jarosław Kaczyński.

Whatever happens, it is important not to read too much into the results and what they ‘mean’ for European (or indeed global) politics. Embarrassing reporting about Babiš as a ‘Czech Trump’, or Fiala showing the West how to ‘fight back against populism’ (as occurred in 2021), will dominate the scant Western coverage of the election, but will also eliminate all of the nuances of the political situation. Czech governments don’t tend to last, and when they do, they don’t get reelected: so, if you think Babiš or Fiala will prove disastrous, then rest assured that they will not be in charge forever.

Despite the Czech Republic’s problems, in many important respects it remains basically a model polity; one that avoids most of the deficiencies of both West and East through a distinctly cynical Czech process of ‘muddling through’.

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This article was written by an anonymous Pimlico Journal contributor. He is a Czech living in London. Have a pitch? Send it to pimlicojournal@substack.com.

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