Czechia enters the Trump 2.0 era

Vladimir Mitev 

Cross-border Talks are back!

In its newest interview for CbT, Czech journalist and researcher Veronika Sušová-Salminen discussed the 5 October 2025 Czech parliamentary elections. Here is a resume of this cross-border talk.

Election Results and Political Dynamics

• Winner: The opposition movement ANO led by Andrej Babiš won with approximately 34.5% of the vote and 108 mandates in the 200-member parliament. This was a slight surprise as the result was higher than expected.
• Opposition Bloc: ANO forms an opposition bloc with the right-wing populist SPD (7.7%) and the newcomer anti-Green Deal, Eurosceptic party Motoristé (Motorists), which strongly advocates for fossil-fuel cars (108 mandates total).
• Government Bloc: The outgoing coalition, consisting of the conservative SPOLU (23.2%), STAN (Mayors and Independents, 11.2%), and the Pirate Party (8.9%), controls 92 votes.
• Key Division: The results underscore a deep and permanent political division in the Czech Republic between liberally oriented rightist forces (the government bloc) and sovereignist nationalist forces (the opposition bloc led by Babiš’s ANO).

Context: Socio-Economic Crisis and Political Fear

The elections took place against a backdrop of severe socio-economic strain:

• Inflation Crisis: Cumulative inflation was over 30% in the last four to five years, one of the highest in the EU, while real incomes fell by over 10%.
• Energy Crisis: The loss of cheap energy due to the Ukrainian crisis heavily impacted the highly industrialized Czech economy. The outgoing government’s “neoliberal” approach to the crisis, expecting the market to solve it, was heavily criticized.
• Housing Crisis: A significant shortage (300,000 needed apartments) and expensive real estate, especially in big cities, have become major issues.

The Role of Fear in the Campaign

• Government Strategy: The outgoing government emphasized fear as a marketing tool to distract from economic issues. They warned that an opposition win would lead to the end of Czech democracy and a Russian invasion, portraying themselves as the only democratic option.
• Opposition Strategy: The opposition, led by Babiš, focused on socio-economic issues, playing on fears that the continuation of the current government would lead to people becoming even poorer. They highlighted that the previous government enriched “fossil barons” and weaponry oligarchs while increasing taxes on ordinary people and small entrepreneurs.

Polarization and the State of the Left

• Regional Polarization: Babiš’s success is attributed to massive support from the peripheries and regions outside of Prague, where one region saw an unprecedented 75% support for ANO. Prague, conversely, strongly supported the liberal right. This demonstrates a socio-economic polarization where the capital and the rest of the country seem to be “living on a different planet.”
• The Decline of the Left: The traditional Czech Left (including the Social Democrats and the Communist Party, running in a coalition called Stačilo!) failed dramatically, scoring only 4.3% and failing to enter parliament. This is a shock, as the left believed the poor socio-economic context would favor them. Babiš and ANO are viewed as continuously drawing votes from former leftist voters.
• Babiš’s Identity: Babiš is described as a political chameleon and a billionaire-oligarch who uses leftist arguments (e.g., supporting pensioners, development in weak regions) but ultimately protects big business interests.

Post-Election Scenarios

• Likely Coalition: The most logical, though not guaranteed, scenario is a coalition government formed by ANO plus the SPD and Motoristé.
• The Babiš Compromise: The biggest question is whether Babiš, in order to gain power, will compromise his social-welfare-leaning promises to the regions to accommodate the extreme neoliberal and austerity-focused policies of his potential coalition partners (SPD and Motoristé), whom the speaker describes as a “living museum” of 1990s market-worshiping politics.
• Uncertainty: The process is expected to be long, with some commentators suggesting no new government will be formed by Christmas. The possibility of Babiš making a deal with a breakaway faction of the outgoing government bloc is also speculated. The president has not yet appointed Babiš to form a government.

The talk concludes by drawing a parallel between Babiš, the political chameleon, and Bulgaria’s former strongman, Boyko Borissov, suggesting the Czech Republic is heading toward a “Trump 2.0 times” political scenario.

Vladimir Mitev: Welcome to Cross-Border Talks. Cross-Border Talks are back after some pause and we are starting with a reflection on the Czech parliamentary elections which took place on 5th October 2925. My partner in this talk will be the Czech journalist and researcher Veronika Sušová-Saminen who is based now in Finland and she will first of all introduce us to the results and to the context in which the elections took place.

Veronika, hello and please join the talk.

Veronika Sušová-Salminen: Hello, everyone. I would like to share a few thoughts on the results, even though everyone can check them online. The results are not surprising; they were largely expected. The winner is the Andrej Babiš political movement ANO. With a slight surprise, as the guesses were a bit lower, it gathered 34.5 percent of the votes. This was higher than expected, but the victory of this political force was pretty clear for the last four years, I would say. It’s no surprise. On the other hand, it’s worth mentioning that this party was in the political opposition for four years.

Two other parties are still scoring on the opposition side: the long-term right-wing populist party SPD (the Czech abbreviation for “Party of Direct Democracy”), which has nothing in common with social democracy and collected only 7.7 percent. It’s important to note that this party seems to be behind its political success because it collected much more support for years. It’s also important to mention that this party was strengthened by joining other right-wing, neoliberal political forces. The third party is the newcomer “Motoristé” (Motorists), which profiles itself not only as right-wing neoliberal in an economic sense, but also as very much against the Green Deal. It is Eurosceptic, and its name comes from the idea that people should have the right to continue using fossil-fuel cars. This idea resonates in Czech society because of the socioeconomic aspects of introducing electric cars—people simply don’t have the money for them. These three opposition forces have 108 mandates in the 200-member parliament.

Among the government parties, there is a clear surprise in the percentage of votes for the SPOLU coalition, which means “together” in Czech. It is a coalition of three right-wing political parties that were in the previous government, and they are trying to maintain their political power. They scored 23.2 percent, a good result compared to the last election in 2021 and how governing went over the last four years. Then there is STAN, a right-wing political force called Starostové a Nezávislí (Mayors and Independents).

They scored 11.2 percent, and the Pirate Party scored 8.9 percent. The Pirate Party was in government for three years and was trying to maintain power through the election, of course. The former coalition now controls 92 votes. It’s clear that there will be competition between these two groups. What’s important to note is that this conflict between liberally oriented rightist forces and more sovereignist nationalist forces connected with ANO and the three parties I mentioned is already a permanent feature of the Czech political landscape. Of course, there are nuances, but this division is the most important dynamic in Czech politics right now.

You asked about the context of these elections, which was, of course, the last four years, a period that was particularly tough for the Czech economy. The Czech economy was not in the best shape in the last four years under a government trying to maintain the status quo. The most important point to add is that inflation had a huge impact.

Cumulative inflation in the Czech Republic is among the highest in the European Union, reaching over 30 percent in the last four to five years. Consequently, the cost of living has increased by 30 percent. Meanwhile, real incomes have fallen by over 10 percent, and they are still at the 2021 level. They are at the same level as in 2019, basically before the pandemic.

This is not only the result of the pandemic, of course, but also the result of the energy crisis and its cumulative impacts, which made life in the Czech Republic much more expensive than people were used to. This crisis also impacted the Czech industrial base, as the Czech Republic is a highly industrialized country.

The country built its prosperity on exporting to Germany, as part of the Central European industrial platform. Two of the most important pillars were cheap labor and cheap energy. This cheap energy is gone, thanks to the impacts of the Ukrainian crisis and governmental policies that were unable to handle the crisis. They handled the crisis in a neoliberal way, assuming the market would solve it and people wouldn’t need much help. These processes were, of course, very important.

The next problem is the increasing housing crisis. Real estate in the Czech Republic is expensive, and there are no apartments. There is nowhere for young families to live because 300,000 new apartments need to be built.

Nobody is able to build them right now. There is no money or potential for it. This issue is especially visible in big towns, where the cost of living and lack of housing are increasingly problematic.

This issue has also become one of the topics of the elections. In general, this is what is said. Of course, foreign policy was still important in the sense that the outgoing government, SPOLU and STAN, emphasized the Russian-Ukrainian war and our NATO membership over the last four years. They emphasized an anti-Russian stance in politics, to the point that you sometimes felt they wanted revenge for the 1968 occupation. This was one of the important topics during the campaign and during the last four years.

You mentioned that the situation in the economic domain and social domain is not easy. To what extent were the clashes or the debates which took place during the campaign related to these socio-economical issues and in general what did the two blocs discuss or quarrel about?

It’s actually interesting. I think it’s not only a Czech specialty; it’s not strange in the current political landscape of the world. The issue is that fear was the most important topic of these elections and the campaign.

The opposition, which won the election with 108 mandates in parliament, accentuated this fear in a very different way than the outgoing government coalition. I would say that these elections were really about “50 Shades of Fear,” to put it in popular terms. Fear was emphasized, sold as a marketing tool, and used to distract from real socio-economic issues.

This was the government’s strategy. The outgoing government emphasized that if the opposition won, two tragedies would occur. The first apocalypse is that Czech democracy will end, and the second is that Putin will come with tanks because the opposition wants to invite him, and they are Russian and basically work with Putin.

In short, they argued that if the opposition won, democracy would end and Putin would invade. Democracy will end because we are democrats; the right-wing government parties are the only democratic parties in the system. All the other opposition parties are non-democratic, extremist, and dangerous to voters. This was the government’s position.

The opposition, meaning Babiš and the other parties, accentuated the socio-economic situation much more. They tried to turn the attention to these issues, and of course, they also played on people’s fears that if this government continues, people will become poorer and their socioeconomic prospects will worsen. They criticized the government’s policies toward entrepreneurs, which are quite logical. This government promised to support small and medium-sized businesses but made their lives much more difficult.

They promised not to raise taxes, but they did, and of course, they raised taxes on ordinary people. One thing to note is that during the previous government, which lost the election, two segments of Czech oligarchs became winners and richer over the last four years. First, there were the fossil barons, those oligarchs or huge entrepreneurs who make money on expensive, unregulated energy.

Then, in the second half, when the war started, it was the oligarchs who own weaponry production. These two groups got richer while normal people and entrepreneurs had to pay more taxes. Employers are basically the source of all taxes for the state in the Czech tax mix, and they cannot escape these taxes. This was one of the issues the opposition tried to highlight, because we must remember that Mr. Babiš is an entrepreneur and billionaire who protects his business interests and those of other entrepreneurs more closely tied to the Czech economy.

We shouldn’t be under any illusions. It’s interesting that the leftist interpretation of the situation was not successful. Critics argue that the government supports oligarchs and the wealthy while failing to tax energy giants that made enormous profits during the 2020-2024 crisis. They also claim that the government did nothing about the annual dividends that leave the country. This money is missing from the economy. It’s missing from taxes and from the development of the country, of course, because it’s making the country poorer by leaving. This kind of criticism came from the left, with nuances from ANO and other parties that made it into parliament.

However, this criticism did not have a significant impact because the left only received about 250,000 votes, which was insufficient for parliamentary representation. The same goes for socio-economic issues, such as the cost of living crisis and the housing shortage. These issues are already having an impact on demographics and the economy.

This also did not resonate much. I think this fear about what will happen resonated much more. This kind of contextualization of things with fear and mobilization of fear is, of course, a normal human emotion, but it can be used for political manipulation. I think it worked pretty well because many people still voted for the government that was unsuccessful economically and socially, and many people frankly voted against their own interests.

Okay, now the results are clear. What do the results show when we put them in this internal context and in the context of all these debates?

One of the things I mentioned is clear evidence that political marketing works well. Even though I live in Finland, I often visit my home country and have experienced firsthand the incredibly high prices. Even basic things like food are incredibly expensive. I think the cumulative inflation was 35 or 36 percent over four years. Not to mention how many firms had to close and how many entrepreneurs had to stop because they simply could not pay the new taxes imposed by the government.

In my opinion, none of this reality was reflected in the results of these governmental parties. The results showed in ANO and oligarch Andrej Babiš because his result was impressive. ANO collected nearly two million votes.

It’s one of the biggest results in Czech modern political history in the last 30 years. Babiš is also the only leader in Czech modern history since 1989 to make a political comeback. He has a real chance to become prime minister again. In our modern history, no prime minister has returned to power with such triumph.

Basically, he has a huge mandate because of the support from the peripheries. He was really able to collect support from people outside Prague. There is huge polarization between the capital and the rest of the country.

If you look at the election map, I can send it to you so that our listeners and viewers can see it. You will see that, besides Prague, ANO won the elections in all regions of the country. ANO had the most support.

In one region, if I remember correctly, they had an unprecedented 75 percent support. It’s the Karlovy Vary Region, one of the socioeconomically weakest areas, paradoxically located on the western border with Germany. This region is within the so-called Just Transition. There was a lot of mining, and mining has been ending for over 20 years.

So, 75 percent. Meanwhile, in Prague, liberal right-wing parties are gaining strong support. Meanwhile, ANO is not.

Polarization is the next important thing. You can see that the polarization is socioeconomic. It seems that the capital is living on a different planet than the rest of the country right now.

This has a huge political impact on how politics are done and how the country works. I have a theory that this is something that is getting worse. It is the result of the last 35 years, unfortunately, as well as of the Czech Republic’s membership in the European Union.

I think there are very bad national development policies, as well as ineffective European development policies. Many people in regions feel left behind. They don’t understand Prague or its people and don’t want anything to do with them. On the other hand, there’s a feeling that Prague is voting against us. This political polarization reflects socio-economic factors and supports the right-wing populist wave that Babiš continuously surfs in a nuanced way.

Sometimes they say he is the next Orbán, but I think that’s an overstatement because Orbánism clearly wouldn’t work in the Czech case. He is really a milder version of Orbánism. This is one of the biggest issues because you see regions supporting a political force that is rising to an unprecedented level.

It’s important to emphasize that this is an ongoing process, and nobody seems to be able to stop it. Instead, people speak about fears of Putin instead of doing something about regional development in the country. It’s interesting, too.

Of course, we will speak about it. I won’t say anything about it now. But it’s clear that the left is unable to find support, and Babiš and ANO are the parties that continuously take votes from leftist voters.

Now, it’s clear that they’ve won over voters, leaving leftist forces with only 4.3% support.

Compared to left-wing parties in other countries, including the communists, the Czech left used to be very strong. So, what is going on with the left-wing tendency in the Czech Republic right now?

No, frankly, there is shock now because the leftists, or the leftist patriotic coalition called “Stačilo!” (Enough!), felt that the current socio-economic context was in their favor and would help them succeed politically and restore the Czech left. I don’t want to get into a discussion about who is more or less left or what should be in this theoretical debate. I’m talking about parties that declare, “We are the left; we are the left party.” I won’t evaluate how left they really are or how much they’re moving towards sovereignty and other discourses.

There is huge disappointment right now because they believed that the socio-economic situation in the Czech Republic and their long-term anti-governmental criticism would help them return to parliament, at least. Before the election on Friday, Stačilo!’s leader Kateřina Konečná, who is also a Member of the European Parliament for the Czech Communist Party, believed that the movement would receive double digits. However, when the results started coming in, it became clear that they would not even reach five percent, the threshold for parliamentary representation in the Czech Republic.

They scored only 4.3 percent despite their relatively strong and noisy campaign and the historical change on the Czech left. After nearly 35 years, the communists and social democrats ran on the same candidate list. This was taboo for social democrats for a long time because of the past. I’ll just remind you that when the Czechoslovakian Communist Party took power in 1948, they dissolved and liquidated the Social Democratic Party. All Social Democratic Party members became Communist Party members or had to leave. There is still bad blood about this. After 1989, the renewed Czech social democracy included in its documents that it would never join with the communists in elections or cooperate with them.

This long-term taboo was broken amid significant controversy, opposition, and debate, including within the Social Democratic Party. However, the new leadership of the social democrats reached an agreement, which ultimately proved ineffective. In 2021, both the Social Democrats and the Communists were voted out of the Czech parliament, with the Social Democrats running on an independent list and the Communists running on the same list. There is no real leftist force.

There’s Babiš, who uses some leftist arguments, but he doesn’t represent the interests of the working class. He owns huge firms in the Czech Republic. He made money as a capitalist in the 1990s, so he is the opposite of a socialist politician.

It’s important to remember this. As an entrepreneur and a politician, he understands that you need some social peace to make money. You can’t just take and not reinvest in social peace. Meanwhile, as you know, neoliberals still believe that cutting everything and implementing austerity policies, destroying working rights and trade unions, etc., will bring prosperity. They believe this is the best way because you have individual responsibility and shouldn’t expect the state to help you in any way. Many politicians in the Czech Republic still believe in this.

We are a bit of a living museum. I would like to remind you that the Argentinian president, Javier Milei, was invited to the Czech Republic last year in June to give a lecture about the benefits of austerity and budget cuts. Returning to Babiš, I am afraid because he is a political chameleon. He does things and changes his rhetoric and policies according to what he and his advisors probably think is the best way to stay in power and make voters happy without addressing major issues.

Right now, he will have to form a coalition with two parties that have a lot of extreme neoliberal politicians. That’s why I mentioned the “living museum” (Skunzen). Both the SPD and Motoristé are stuck in the 1990s with their individualism, belief in the market, minimalist state, and policies that we’ve seen destroy economies during and after the global financial crisis. These policies didn’t bring any prosperity to Central and Eastern Europe or convergence. They believe they will. They are again saying, “We are the authentic right, and these are our recipes for most things.”

The question now is whether Babiš will keep his word and continue to support these weak regions. He promised development and better taxation and conditions for small entrepreneurs. He supports long-term pensioners and higher pensions, not privatization of the pension system. He has a lot of senior and pensioner voters.

We will see if he can find compromises with these two political parties because, right now, it doesn’t seem possible for him to reach an agreement with the so-called “Democrats.” If he changes his strategy to keep power and return to government, we will see. This is the huge question. Meanwhile, he said he wants a silent government, but the Motorists’ Association said they will either join the government or not support it.

They are already asking for ministries and places in the government. This is really an open question. Some commentators say that, most probably, we will not have a government by Christmas. It’s possible that, even then, there will only be a caretaker government without parliamentary support, which could be a pretty long process.

Of course, we don’t know if some kind of different agreement will be reached. There has been a lot of speculation that Babiš could reach an agreement with today’s government. This would make sense in many ways, of course.

If you look at the oligarchs’ interests, you’ll see that they represent the most dominant policy on both sides. But, of course, we’ll see. This is really an open question. Right now, the president is meeting with all the parties, but he hasn’t appointed Babiš as prime minister to form a government.

There are some processes going on, and we will simply see what comes of them.

Okay, I see that the Czech Republic is setting itself up for Trump twice, just as a number of other countries in the region have been doing, including Bulgaria. Describing Babiš as a chameleon is a good reminder of what Bulgarian strongman Boyko Borisov represents. I like that you left many questions unanswered. This means that we will continue to follow and comment when important developments occur.

On that note, I’ll end this Cross-Border Talk. Please follow us on social media, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Substack. Thank you for following.

Photo: Andrej Babiš (source: YouTube)

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