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Czech Republic Faces An Uncertain Political Future – Analysis

By Robert Beck (FPRI) -- Following underwhelming provincial and senatorial elections in the fall of 2024, the Czech Republic prepares to enter the critical year of 2025 with a divided electorate, an unpopular and shrinking coalition government, and a resurgent populist opposition. Facing an unsettled European geopolitical landscape on the horizon as a result of Donald Trump’s reelection in America, the current center-right, pro-western Czech coalition will be severely tested in parliamentary elections, scheduled for no later than October 2025. Regional and Senatorial Polls: Did Anybody Win?  In the September polls in the Czech Republic, leadership positions in all thirteen of the country’s regions (Kraj), as well as twenty-seven of the upper house of parliament’s senate seats, were up for grabs. While by sheer numbers the main Czech opposition party, ANO, (Czech: Akce nespokojených občanů: action of dissatisfied citizens) appears to have won the recent elections, the actual results merit a more nuanced interpretation. At the regional level, the party of former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš won, according to Radio Prague International, by a landslide victory, securing control of ten of the nation’s thirteen regions. Only regions in South Moravia, Liberec, and South Bohemia resisted the apparent ANO wave. For his part, opposition leader Babiš considered the results of the regional polls a great victory for the party and a function of ANO’s extremely active efforts in opposition to the ruling SPOLU (Czech: together) coalition. What was not highlighted as the dust settled from the regional vote was the fact that participation was abysmally low with only 32.91% of registered voters participating. That represents the worst showing in a Czech regional election since 2004. As a comparison, the most recent general parliamentary polls in 2021 saw nearly 66% voter participation. Moreover, during the previous regional elections in 2020, ANO also won a plurality of votes in ten of the country’s regions. That result did not translate to victory for the group the following year in parliamentary elections. Consequently, though Babiš and ANO clearly were victorious, their victory fell far short of a full-throated mandate for change. Meanwhile, the Senate results were equally muddled for Babiš and his populist opposition. Although ANO’s haul of eight seats out of twenty-seven contested represents the best ever showing in the upper house for the party, the ruling SPOLU coalition took fifteen of the seats. The final tally in the eighty-one-seat body shows the governing coalition with sixty-five seats and Babiš’s party controlling a paltry twelve seats. Furthermore, like the aforementioned regional elections, woefully low turnout for the senatorial polls highlighted the depths of Czech apathy toward this ballot. Consequently, though ANO could claim progress in increasing the party’s share of senatorial seats, it would be naive to consider the results a populist political wave. Shrinking Coalition Nevertheless, the news was not particularly reassuring either for the governing coalition as the recent elections caused the withdrawal of the Pirates party (Czech: Pirátská strana), one of its five founding members. The lamentable showing by the Pirates in both the European Parliament elections in June 2024 and the Czech regional elections precipitated a showdown between Prime Minister Fiala and the leader of the Pirates, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Regional Development Ivan Bartoš. The main trigger for the internal SPOLU acrimony was the failure of Bartoš and his ministry to implement a promised digitized system for issuing building permits. The dispute came to a head shortly after the election as the prime minister dismissed Bartoš from his post on September 24, 2024, triggering the Pirates’ withdrawal from the governing coalition. The party had two other ministers in the cabinet, one of whom, Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský, resigned from the Pirates and stayed on with the coalition. The result of the political falling out reduced the coalition’s majority in parliament to 104 seats out of 200. Moreover, the remnants of the Pirates are now firmly ensconced in the country’s opposition, leaving only four parties—the Civic Democrats (ODS), the Christian Democrats (KDU-ČSL), TOP-09, and the centrist STAN movement—to fend off the ANO-led populist movement. Changing Security Landscape The setting for this Czech political drama leading into the critical election year of 2025 is a dangerous European security situation highlighted by the potential reverberations of the reelection of Donald Trump as president of the United States. The Czechs, under the heretofore strong foreign policy focus of the SPOLU coalition, have been at the forefront of EU and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) efforts to supply arms to Ukraine. While these efforts have burnished the Czechs’ image in Brussels and Mons, they have contributed to deep disputes between Prague and Visegrad Four (V4) member states Hungary and Slovakia over the war in Ukraine, in the process rendering that previously proud grouping of states obsolete. Given the growing clamor across the continent, with Hungary and Slovakia in the lead, for a negotiated settlement to end the conflagration on the EU’s eastern flank, so-called peace parties across the region will be emboldened to capitalize on the swelling war fatigue. This will undoubtedly present a significant electoral challenge to the SPOLU coalition in the 2025 elections as Andrej Babiš and his ANO colleagues have consistently pined for peace in Ukraine. In fact, during the 2023 Czech plebiscite for president, Babiš continually painted his main rival, eventual winner Petr Pavel, as a warmonger. The strategy backfired badly on the ANO leader at that time. A similar tact may prove more efficacious in the upcoming polls. At the time of this writing (December 1, 2024), it is still unclear exactly how Donald Trump’s return to the White House will influence the war in Ukraine. However, should the new president succeed in pushing for a swift negotiated settlement to end the fighting, the SPOLU coalition will lose one of its primary foreign policy successes—staunch support to Ukraine—with which to campaign. Under this scenario, ANO and its potential future ruling partners, the right-wing SPD party (Czech: Svoboda a přímá demokracie: freedom and direct democracy) would likely fare well with an electorate frustrated with painful financial and social reforms pursued by the SPOLU coalition during its rule.  Bleak Prospects for Governing Coalition As the election year of 2025 approaches, the Czech Republic faces an uncertain future with a possible return to power by Andrej Babiš and his ANO movement. In fact, according to polling in October of 2024, an ANO/SPD coalition is projected to control 111 of the 200 seats in the Czech parliament, a considerably stronger majority than the current SPOLU government currently enjoys. Indicative of a growing and troubling fondness among the Czech populace in an erstwhile, romanticized past, a public opinion poll conducted during the summer of 2024 by the Public Opinion Research Center of the Czech Academy of Sciences revealed some disturbing numbers. Less than half of the respondents felt that current conditions in the country are better than before the revolution in November of 1989. Furthermore, more than half of those polled opined that, in the realm of social security and public safety, life was better before the revolution. Against this backdrop of withering Czech public confidence in the country’s liberal-democratic future, populists on the left (ANO) and right (SPD) smell blood in the political waters. Highlighting this point, opposition leader Babiš publicly and loudly questioned the mental health of Prime Minister Fiala in parliament on November 22, 2024 in response to Fiala’s earlier remarks about the Czech Republic’s goal of achieving the same average wage as Germany within five years. Coming on the heels of a cantankerous debate in the legislature on a potential that SPOLU supports and the opposition vehemently rejects, the seeds are being sown for a likely change of government in Prague in late 2025.  The Visegrád One? With Hungary and Slovakia firmly in the “illiberal democracy” camp, the return of populist rule in Prague would represent a trifecta in Central Europe for the anti-EU, soft-on-Russia crowd. It would also reduce the formerly pro-Western, Russophobic Visegrád Four to a minority of one, Poland. The consequences of that eventuality for those inhabiting the geopolitical interstices between Germany and Russia are hard to predict but would likely be welcomed more in Moscow than in Brussels. It is not lost on many observers of the region that a mere thirty-five years after the Iron Curtain fell in a paroxysmal eruption of democratic demonstrations, the Czechs are poised to join their Slovak and Hungarian counterparts in hedging their bets on the West and gazing sentimentally to the East. About the author: Robert “Bob” Beck served overseas for nearly 30 years, as a member of the US foreign policy community, in embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He has a BA in Soviet and Eastern European Studies from the University of Maryland and an MA in International Relations from Boston University.  Source: This article was published at FPRI