Enough!—the name of a Czech party and a word that sums up the mood not only in the Czech Republic but all around Europe as right-wing and anti-establishment parties made substantial gains at this year’s European elections.
In the Czech Republic, voters punished the five-party coalition which has been perceived as being soft on issues that concern the country’s citizens, such as migration and the European Green Deal. The centrist government did not follow in the footsteps of its Central European partners (Hungary, Slovakia and Poland) to reject the EU’s recently adopted Migration Pact—which makes it compulsory for member states to either accept migrants or pay a fine—but merely abstained.
The Czech economy has also been in a dire state for the past few years, with high inflation reducing consumer purchasing power. As with their European counterparts, Czech farmers have been protesting against the Green Deal and high energy costs which threaten their livelihood. The government’s cause was not helped when Prime Minister Petr Fiala—though himself a critic of the Green Deal—accused protest organisers of being “pro-Russian” or having other political goals. A survey published last October revealed that almost 80% of the population does not trust the prime minister, who has been in power since November 2021.
Voters vented their frustration at the government whose parties jointly received only about a third of all votes: the Fiala-led centre-right Spolu got 22.3%, pro-EU liberal Mayors and Independents finished on 8.7%, and the leftist Pirate Party 6.2%. The three alliances and parties got 9 seats out of the 21 allocated to the Czech Republic in the European Parliament (EP), a drop of three seats compared to the EP elections five years ago. Petr Fiala admitted defeat, saying “the results reflect the mood of society.”
Roman Joch, Executive Director of the Czech conservative think tank the Civic Institute, told The European Conservative:
The elections resulted in the complete defeat of the strongest pro-European parties, the left-liberal parties. There are two reasons for that: the Migration Pact and the Green Deal. By 2035 the sale of all petrol and diesel cars will be banned, and only electric vehicles will be sold. Czechs have realised that those cars will be more expensive and their living standards will decrease. Our Škoda cars are the flagship of Czech industry. The voters’ message to the government was that they must be tougher on these issues.
Meanwhile, anti-establishment and populist parties made big gains, raking in the remaining twelve seats in the European Parliament.
Previous Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s ANO movement, a centrist, but in many aspects conservative party, and described by many as a populist political force, finished the elections in first place with 26.1% of the votes and seven seats (one more than five years ago). The movement campaigned under the headline “No to immigration and the green madness.” Babiš said he would overturn the EU’s ban on petrol and diesel cars and would get rid of tax burdens on energy consumption if he were reelected in national elections next autumn.
As Roman Joch explains:
The ANO movement has moved more to the Right, they are more conservative on immigration, and are opposed to the Green Deal and the holy jihad against diesel and petrol cars. But in economic terms, the party leans more to the left compared to the current government.
Babiš is a close ally of both the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and his Slovakian counterpart Robert Fico, both of whom have drawn the ire of the EU elites for their anti-war, anti-immigration and anti-gender ideology rhetoric. Babiš himself has gone against the mainstream thinking on Ukraine, and has called for peace negotiations to end the war. He has also blamed the current Czech government for “dismantling” the V4 cooperation of Central European nations.
ANO has been the single strongest party in the Czech Republic for the past nine to ten years, regularly polling between 25% and 35%. Analysts believe the party’s handling of the economy and its ability to attract voters from different social classes has contributed to its success.
Third and fourth place went to a right-wing and a left-wing alliance who were united over the condemnation of the EU’s policies on migration and climate change, as well as their strong opposition to military support for Ukraine. The right-wing Přísaha a Motoristé received 10.3% of the votes and two seats in the European Parliament, with party leader, former racing driver Filip Turek saying he will arrive at the first plenary session of the Parliament by a car with a “large carbon footprint.”
Stačilo! (Enough!)—a grouping formed by the Communist Party—got 9.6% and two seats. “The vote was a referendum on this government and a referendum on peace—and we won both,” said Communist Party leader Kateřina Konečná.
The Přísaha a Motoristé alliance unexpectedly weakened another eurosceptic party, the right-wing anti-immigration Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) which got 5.7% percent of the vote and will be sending just one MEP to Brussels. “We don’t want African and Arab immigrants or the spread of Islam and mosques!” warned SPD leader Tomio Okamura, himself of mixed Japanese and Czech heritage. “It’s very Kafkaesque that the person who holds the banner of Czech nationalism is a Japanese,” remarked Roman Joch.
The next chapter in Czech politics will be to see what kind of alliances the parties will try to forge inside the European Parliament. Filip Turek said he would like his newly formed party to join the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), a group to which Petr Fiala’s Civic Democratic Party belongs. Meanwhile, Andrej Babiš has hinted at the possibility of leaving the liberal Renew group—headed by French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party—saying he no longer considers his party a good fit with the rest of the group given how the majority of EU liberals voted on the Migration Pact and the Green Deal. “Ideologically he belongs to the ECR but Fiala, who hates Babiš, will try to block that. Babiš’s political positions are now closer to Viktor Orbán than to Emmanuel Macron,” Roman Joch added.
BREAKING: Infowars Archive In Danger
Prime Minister Petr Fiala admitted that the results reflected the mood of the society.
Enough!—the name of a Czech party and a word that sums up the mood not only in the Czech Republic but all around Europe as right-wing and anti-establishment parties made substantial gains at this year’s European elections.
In the Czech Republic, voters punished the five-party coalition which has been perceived as being soft on issues that concern the country’s citizens, such as migration and the European Green Deal. The centrist government did not follow in the footsteps of its Central European partners (Hungary, Slovakia and Poland) to reject the EU’s recently adopted Migration Pact—which makes it compulsory for member states to either accept migrants or pay a fine—but merely abstained.
The Czech economy has also been in a dire state for the past few years, with high inflation reducing consumer purchasing power. As with their European counterparts, Czech farmers have been protesting against the Green Deal and high energy costs which threaten their livelihood. The government’s cause was not helped when Prime Minister Petr Fiala—though himself a critic of the Green Deal—accused protest organisers of being “pro-Russian” or having other political goals. A survey published last October revealed that almost 80% of the population does not trust the prime minister, who has been in power since November 2021.
Voters vented their frustration at the government whose parties jointly received only about a third of all votes: the Fiala-led centre-right Spolu got 22.3%, pro-EU liberal Mayors and Independents finished on 8.7%, and the leftist Pirate Party 6.2%. The three alliances and parties got 9 seats out of the 21 allocated to the Czech Republic in the European Parliament (EP), a drop of three seats compared to the EP elections five years ago. Petr Fiala admitted defeat, saying “the results reflect the mood of society.”
Roman Joch, Executive Director of the Czech conservative think tank the Civic Institute, told The European Conservative:
The elections resulted in the complete defeat of the strongest pro-European parties, the left-liberal parties. There are two reasons for that: the Migration Pact and the Green Deal. By 2035 the sale of all petrol and diesel cars will be banned, and only electric vehicles will be sold. Czechs have realised that those cars will be more expensive and their living standards will decrease. Our Škoda cars are the flagship of Czech industry. The voters’ message to the government was that they must be tougher on these issues.
Meanwhile, anti-establishment and populist parties made big gains, raking in the remaining twelve seats in the European Parliament.
Previous Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s ANO movement, a centrist, but in many aspects conservative party, and described by many as a populist political force, finished the elections in first place with 26.1% of the votes and seven seats (one more than five years ago). The movement campaigned under the headline “No to immigration and the green madness.” Babiš said he would overturn the EU’s ban on petrol and diesel cars and would get rid of tax burdens on energy consumption if he were reelected in national elections next autumn.
As Roman Joch explains:
The ANO movement has moved more to the Right, they are more conservative on immigration, and are opposed to the Green Deal and the holy jihad against diesel and petrol cars. But in economic terms, the party leans more to the left compared to the current government.
Babiš is a close ally of both the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and his Slovakian counterpart Robert Fico, both of whom have drawn the ire of the EU elites for their anti-war, anti-immigration and anti-gender ideology rhetoric. Babiš himself has gone against the mainstream thinking on Ukraine, and has called for peace negotiations to end the war. He has also blamed the current Czech government for “dismantling” the V4 cooperation of Central European nations.
ANO has been the single strongest party in the Czech Republic for the past nine to ten years, regularly polling between 25% and 35%. Analysts believe the party’s handling of the economy and its ability to attract voters from different social classes has contributed to its success.
Third and fourth place went to a right-wing and a left-wing alliance who were united over the condemnation of the EU’s policies on migration and climate change, as well as their strong opposition to military support for Ukraine. The right-wing Přísaha a Motoristé received 10.3% of the votes and two seats in the European Parliament, with party leader, former racing driver Filip Turek saying he will arrive at the first plenary session of the Parliament by a car with a “large carbon footprint.”
Stačilo! (Enough!)—a grouping formed by the Communist Party—got 9.6% and two seats. “The vote was a referendum on this government and a referendum on peace—and we won both,” said Communist Party leader Kateřina Konečná.
The Přísaha a Motoristé alliance unexpectedly weakened another eurosceptic party, the right-wing anti-immigration Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) which got 5.7% percent of the vote and will be sending just one MEP to Brussels. “We don’t want African and Arab immigrants or the spread of Islam and mosques!” warned SPD leader Tomio Okamura, himself of mixed Japanese and Czech heritage. “It’s very Kafkaesque that the person who holds the banner of Czech nationalism is a Japanese,” remarked Roman Joch.
The next chapter in Czech politics will be to see what kind of alliances the parties will try to forge inside the European Parliament. Filip Turek said he would like his newly formed party to join the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), a group to which Petr Fiala’s Civic Democratic Party belongs. Meanwhile, Andrej Babiš has hinted at the possibility of leaving the liberal Renew group—headed by French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party—saying he no longer considers his party a good fit with the rest of the group given how the majority of EU liberals voted on the Migration Pact and the Green Deal. “Ideologically he belongs to the ECR but Fiala, who hates Babiš, will try to block that. Babiš’s political positions are now closer to Viktor Orbán than to Emmanuel Macron,” Roman Joch added.
BREAKING: Infowars Archive In Danger
https://www.infowars.com/posts/surge-of-right-wing-and-anti-establishment-parties-in-czech-eu-elections2024-06-13T06:48:13.000Z2024-06-13T06:48:13.000Z