Czechia Elects Populist Billionaire as Prime Minister

Andrej Babiš (left) shakes hand with Donald Trump (right) during a 2019 White House meeting (Picryl).

Right-wing, populist businessman Andrej Babiš has returned to power in Czechia for a second non-consecutive term after holding office from 2017 to 2021. Babiš’ party, ANO, won Czechia’s October 4 general election with 35 percent of the vote. Coalition negotiations are likely to result in Babiš reclaiming the post of prime minister, continuing the Europe-sweeping trend of electoral success for nationalist leaders.

Since founding it in 2011, Babiš led ANO — whose name is a play on the Czech word for “Yes” —  to its best-ever result, taking 80 out of 200 parliament seats in an election with the highest voter turnout since 1998. Twenty-one seats short of a simple majority, he will likely seek to form a government with the two hard-right parties, which hold 28 seats between them. Despite holding enough seats to form a three-fifths constitutional majority in a coalition with ANO, center-right SPOLU has ruled out working with Babiš. While both groups are nominally conservative, ANO has spent the past four years in opposition lambasting the government. The electoral cycle consisted largely of Babiš and Petr Fiala, who is the outgoing prime minister and SPOLU’s leader, “trad[ing] petty insults.” For instance, Babiš accused Fiala of being “a ‘fool’ whose brain was clouded by ‘anti-Babišism’” in one of their debates.

Babiš, 71, has a checkered past that stretches as far back as the 1980s, when he became a member of the Czech Communist party and allegedly served the secret police. More recently, he has come under fire for his deceptive business dealings. Courts have found that Babiš, a billionaire, illegally retained control over his conglomerate’s dealings in his first term, as well as during his term as finance minister from 2013 to 2017. Moreover, he has been accused of misusing EU farm and small business subsidies and committing tax fraud through offshore accounts.

Babiš’s isolationist foreign policy may further fragment Europe. Having promised to “make the Czech Republic great again,” he has signaled a desire to curtail his country’s stalwart support for Ukraine. Last year, Czechia delivered 1.5 million artillery shells to Ukraine and has taken in a total of nearly 400,000 Ukrainian refugees since Russia’s invasion in 2022. Meanwhile, Czech citizens have faced mounting domestic hardship, as living costs have consistently outpaced incomes since 2019. Babiš places much of the blame for this on Europe. Last year, ANO collaborated with major Austrian and Hungarian far-right parties to create a “Patriots for Europe” alliance, which seeks to hamper EU federalism and Russia-bashing in favor of national sovereignty. Babiš opposes NATO’s recent commitment to spend 3.5 percent of GDP on defense by 2035 — Czechia has only recently met the goal of 2 percent defense spending, a target NATO set back in 2014. Babiš’ isolationist tendency contrasts that of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has insisted that Europe pay for its own defense. Czechia also appears particularly vulnerable to Trump’s EU tariffs due to its reliance on manufacturing and the automotive industry.