[FR] Czech election: a weak European signal?

Despite the relatively limited role that the Czech constitution confers on the President of the Republic, the election to appoint Miloš Zeman’s successor (13-14 and 27-28 January 2023) is not a political event without interest, both from the point of view of internal developments in the Czech Republic and for its European implications.

The decisive victory – with 35.4% in the first round and 58.32% in the second – of retired General Petr Pavel is a minor revolution in Czech political life. Admittedly, his military career has been exemplary, despite his controversial beginnings under the communist regime. A paratrooper who took part in the UN mission in the former Yugoslavia, where he distinguished himself during a rescue operation of a French UNPROFOR unit, he was Chief of the General Staff of the Czech Army (2012-15) and then Chairman of the NATO Military Committee (2015-18). However, he had no political experience prior to his presidential campaign and, until recently, was unknown to a large part of the population. His profile contrasts with that of his predecessors, for whom the presidential term was the culmination of a long political career. However, while the success of such a candidate may come as a surprise, it is not entirely out of place in Central Europe: in neighbouring Slovakia, Andrej Kiska, elected president in 2014, and Zuzana Čaputová, elected in 2019, were also political novices.

This election also plays an important role in the Czech Republic’s positioning in Europe. Indeed, it comes just after the end of the Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU. The latter was widely hailed as a success, restoring the country’s European image, often perceived as one of the most Eurosceptic Member States and likely to amplify the ‘illiberal’ drift in Europe, particularly in Central Europe. In this context, the presidential election was a test of the strength of the Czech Republic’s anchoring in the European mainstream. Finally, the results of this election will undoubtedly be interpreted in relation to the war in Ukraine: the election of a president whose position on support for Ukraine and condemnation of Russia is more hesitant or ambiguous, even if it does not fundamentally change the country’s position, would inevitably be perceived as weakening European unity in the face of Russian aggression.

In terms of Czech political life, this election has significant symbolic value, as the country is definitively turning the page on the political generation that emerged with the fall of the communist regime in 1989: none of the main candidates were politically active in 1989 or in the 1990s. Paradoxically, however, both finalists have in common the fact that, although young, they compromised with the communist regime. Beyond this historical aspect, this election was an important test for Petr Fiala’s government, which has been in power since December 2021. But also for Andrej Babiš, the strongman of Czech politics since 2011, a controversial billionaire who is politically unclassifiable but is gradually drifting towards a Czech variation of Central European ‘illiberal’ national populism. After being ousted from power in the 2021 legislative elections, following mixed results for his political movement, ANO, in the 2022 municipal elections and a clear defeat in the senatorial elections of the same year, the presidential election was of paramount importance for Andrej Babiš’s ability to remain the undisputed leader of his movement and of the opposition.

1. The presidential election: a political issue, but above all a symbolic showdown between Czech liberals and illiberals

The Czech political system resembles that of the Fourth Republic in France or that of Italy today. While the centre of gravity of executive power clearly lies with the government, the President of the Republic enjoys high visibility, both domestically and internationally. One example of this was the new president’s phone call to Taiwan immediately after his election. He has a number of significant powers of his own. And he becomes an influential political player in the event of a government crisis or when the government has only a relative and/or uncertain majority in the Chamber of Deputies – situations that are fairly common in the Czech Republic. It was therefore not insignificant to know who would become the new occupant of Prague Castle after four terms (20 years) of two presidents, Václav Klaus and Miloš Zeman, who, each in their own way, stood out in the national and, above all, European political landscape.

The divide between ‘liberal-democratic’ and ‘pro-Western’ political forces on the one hand, and “illiberal” and ‘anti-Western’ forces on the other, with the country’s geopolitical orientation as the main issue, was already at the heart of the 2021 parliamentary elections. Admittedly, this divide is not as clear-cut as in Hungary or Poland, to take just two examples from neighbouring countries, as the positioning of certain key players is more ambiguous in the Czech Republic. Thus, the dominant force in the ‘illiberal’ camp, Andrej Babiš’s ANO movement, has – like its founder and leader – a protean and malleable ideological profile, allowing it to claim excellent relations with Viktor Orbán while sitting in the Renew Europe group in the European Parliament. Or to court the pro-Russian electorate with Kremlin-style rhetoric on peace, while having taken – as prime minister – several decisions that were not at all appreciated by Moscow. On the other side, the main party in the ‘pro-Western’ coalition, Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s Civic Democratic Party (ODS), sits in the European Parliament in the ECR group, alongside Poland’s PiS and Fratelli d’Italia, and in the past has not failed to show its support for Viktor Orbán. However, faced with Andrej Babiš, supported by Miloš Zeman and ready to ally himself with both the Communist Party (KSČM) and the far right (SPD), the ODS had ‘re-centred’ itself to position itself as a defender of liberal democracy in the run-up to the 2021 general election. And by allying itself with four pro-European parties (three small parties belonging to the EPP and the Pirate Party, affiliated with the Greens/EFA), it even erased its traditional Euroscepticism. It is symptomatic that a few days before the 2021 general election, it was Andrej Babiš who welcomed Viktor Orbán himself to one of his last rallies.

2. Andrej Babiš’s strengths and weaknesses

Although the result of the general election sent Andrej Babiš back into opposition, it gave him a glimpse of solid chances for the presidential election, since his movement and its potential allies were certainly in the minority in terms of seats but clearly in the majority in terms of votes. In addition to the considerable financial and media resources at his disposal (Andrej Babiš is one of the country’s wealthiest individuals and owns a large media group, including two major daily newspapers), which were likely to boost his candidacy, another factor favoured his presidential ambitions: the support of the outgoing president, Miloš Zeman. Add to this the fact that Andrej Babiš had been running a campaign that did not say its name since the beginning of 2022, criss-crossing the country in a camper van, and the relative unpopularity of the Fiala government (with only 28% of citizens trusting it, according to a CVVM poll in autumn 2022, one year after taking office), Andrej Babiš was not an obvious favourite, but he went into the presidential election with a solid chance of winning.

His biggest handicap was the fact that he is a very divisive figure: he has a fairly large core of staunch supporters, representing around 30% of the electorate likely to participate in the election. But he also provokes a radical rejection from a substantial part of the population, who see him as a threat to Czech democracy and to the country’s Western and European orientation. The context of the war in Ukraine has reinforced this divide, making Andrej Babiš’s position more delicate. The strength of the country’s Western anchoring has become a major concern in this new context. The more or less acknowledged proximity between Andrej Babiš and pro-Russian forces prior to the Russian invasion (some of which remained so even after the invasion) or his links with Viktor Orbán have become a handicap or, at the very least, an argument for turning the presidential election into a kind of referendum on Andrej Babiš and/or the country’s Western orientation – rather than a referendum on the government, as Andrej Babiš would have liked.

The attempt to focus the presidential election on the Fiala government’s record was not made any easier by the profile of his main opponents. Surprisingly, but symptomatic of the crisis facing political parties in the Czech Republic, none of the five parties in the governing coalition was able to put forward a candidate. The governing coalition limited itself to expressing its undifferentiated support for three independent candidates, presenting themselves as guarantors of the country’s Western and liberal-democratic orientation: Pavel Fischer, the ‘third man’ in the 2018 election, senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee; Danuše Nerudová, former rector of Mendel University in Brno; and Petr Pavel. Admittedly, Andrej Babiš systematically presented the latter, particularly during the campaign between the two rounds, as the government’s candidate. However, the former general’s career, which was by definition apolitical and non-partisan, the fact that his candidacy was based on a citizens’ petition, and the fact that his campaign team had no strong links to the parties in the governing coalition, all made this angle of attack ineffective among undecided voters.

3. Exceptional mobilisation of the electorate

Unlike in the 2021 legislative elections, where Andrej Babiš’s potential allies won more than 22% of the vote while his ANO movement won 27.12%, in the first round of the 2023 presidential election, Andrej Babiš largely ‘siphoned off’ the votes of the ‘Babiš-compatible’ candidates. He immediately obtained a score well above the results his movement had achieved until then: 34.99%. But the only candidate likely to support Babiš in the second round (and who did not even do so, considering that Babiš and Pavel were equally matched), Jaroslav Bašta (SPD, far right), obtained only 4.45% of the vote. In other words, Andrej Babiš had very little support, while Petr Pavel, who came out on top with 35.4%, received explicit and strong support from Danuše Nerudová (13.92%), Pavel Fischer (6.75%), Marek Hilšer (2.56%) and Karel Diviš (1.35%).

However, Andrej Babiš was unable to repeat Miloš Zeman’s feat in the 2018 presidential election, when he managed to win in the second round with 51.36% of the vote by mobilising a significant number of abstainers from the first round and taking advantage of the relative weakness of the transfer of votes between his rivals. This time, the transfer of votes to Petr Pavel worked very well and turnout was very high in the first^round. However, Andrej Babiš also tried to break his rival’s electoral momentum with an aggressive campaign, positioning himself – as Viktor Orbán did successfully in the Hungarian parliamentary elections in March 2022 – as a proponent of peace against Petr Pavel, who was portrayed as a warmonger, with the slogan ‘I will not lead the Czech Republic into war. I am a diplomat, not a soldier. President Babiš’. But this theme did not catch on and even backfired on its author, who, – during a televised debate between the two rounds – his stance as a man of peace to the point of stating that he would not send Czech soldiers to die for Poland or the Baltic countries if they were attacked by Russia, causing an outcry at national and international level and prompting a rapid U-turn.

His other argument – presenting Pavel as the government’s candidate and calling for a protest vote – was not enough, even though it was undoubtedly one of the reasons that enabled him to gain nearly 450,000 votes between the two rounds, obtaining a number of votes corresponding to 164.6% of those obtained by his ANO movement in the 2021 legislative elections. But the most significant effect of this strategy – which broke with his desire to appear, before the first round, as a more consensual candidate capable of appealing to part of the centrist and pro-European electorate, presenting himself a few days before the election not with Viktor Orbán as in 2021, but with Emmanuel Macron – was the exceptional mobilisation of Babiš’s detractors: Petr Pavel not only won by far the largest margin in the second round (58.32% against 51.36% and 54.8% for Miloš Zeman in 2018 and 2013 respectively), but he also won more than half a million more votes than Miloš Zeman in 2018.

4. The Czech fallout…

This exceptional voter turnout – exceeding 70%, which has not been seen since 1998 (see Table 2) – is undoubtedly one of the most striking aspects of this election in terms of developments in Czech politics. However, it would be premature to rejoice in the belief that the presidential election has permanently revitalised the Czech electorate: this overvaluation of the presidential election in relation to its real influence on the country’s development may even prove counterproductive, as disproportionate expectations could generate further frustration. For example, many of Andrej Babiš’s voters expected him to dismiss Petr Fiala’s government – a prerogative that is not, however, among the powers of the Czech president. Furthermore, this election highlights the weakness of political parties: of the seven parties represented in the Chamber of Deputies, only one – the SPD – presented a candidate from its ranks. And this situation is not new: no member of a party represented in the Chamber of Deputies stood as a candidate in the 2018 presidential election.

As for the balance of power on the Czech political scene, Petr Fiala’s government has undoubtedly emerged stronger from this election: the opposition leader was soundly defeated by one of the three candidates endorsed by the government. And even though Petr Pavel ran as an independent candidate, his positioning throughout the campaign suggests that he would be a much more accommodating president towards the government than Miloš Zeman was or Andrej Babiš would have been. But here again, paradoxical effects cannot be ruled out: the frustration caused by this crushing defeat may further exacerbate the rejection of the government in the eyes of part of the population. And the fact that it now has an ally in Prague Castle will not change much in terms of the difficulties the government is struggling to resolve: inflation of 15.1% in 2022 (compared to 9.2% in the eurozone), difficulty in implementing effective measures to deal with the explosion in energy prices (with the highest increase in household electricity prices in the EU), and erosion of support for its policy towards Ukraine (according to polls by the CVVM institute, between spring and autumn 2022, the proportion of citizens who disapprove of the government’s action towards Ukraine rose from 35% to 52%). Finally, although he was unable to win, Andrej Babiš emerges a priori strengthened in his status as leader of the opposition.

Indeed, he currently has no significant rival in the eyes of citizens seeking an alternative to the governing coalition. The parties he ‘siphoned off’ in the 2021 legislative elections have not recovered, whether it be the Social Democrats (ČSSD) or the Communist Party (KSČM). And the far-right SPD party fell from 9.56% in the legislative elections to 4.45% in the presidential election. However, the rhetoric of its candidate Jaroslav Bašta could have appealed to voters who do not agree with the government’s policy on Ukraine, but clearly the vast majority of these voters preferred to vote for Andrej Babiš in the first round. The 2.4 million votes that Babiš won in the second round are a very good ‘investment’ for the 2025 parliamentary elections, even if that is still a long way off. But given the abundance of resources at Babiš’s disposal to run a permanent campaign, his ability to maintain a high profile and retain his voters remains strong. The only downside is that, for the first time, some dissenting voices have been heard within the ANO movement, notably the mayor of Ostrava (the country’s third largest city) and the hejtman of the Moravia-Silesia Region, who have publicly declared that they will vote for Petr Pavel in the first round, considering that Andrej Babiš does not have the necessary qualities for the presidential office. However, this is far from a significant rebellion that could undermine the position of the founding president within his movement.

4. … and European

At the European level, the Czech Republic is confirming and even strengthening its reputation as one of the two countries – along with Slovakia – in the Visegrád Group that do not fundamentally deviate from the European mainstream, with the exception of the migration issue. Until now, the Czech Republic’s European partners have been accustomed to dealing with a number of contradictions between the government and the President of the Republic. From now on, we can expect the Czech Republic to speak more with one voice – and that voice will not be ‘illiberal’, except where influenced by part of the ODS. From this point of view, it will be interesting to see what lessons this party will draw from the Czech Presidency in the second half of 2022 (and more generally from the entire European sequence marked by the health crisis and the war in Ukraine, or even Brexit) with regard to its general perception of the European project and its articulation with Czech national interests. An important indicator will be provided by European alliances: will the ODS remain affiliated with the ECR group in the European Parliament? And if so, what will be its position within this group, particularly with regard to relations with other groups or the issue of the affiliation of Fidesz MEPs, who continue to sit among the non-attached members? This will also depend to a large extent on Giorgia Meloni’s European policy.

Far from providing a definitive answer, the Czech presidential election has provided some insight into the direction Central Europe will take in the face of the radically new context created by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. By overwhelmingly electing the former chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, the Czechs have sent a strong signal to Brussels, Washington, Kiev and Moscow. It is a more Atlanticist than European signal, but given the structure of political positions in the Czech Republic since 1989, this distinction, to which the French are generally very sensitive, is a matter of nuance, if not a non-issue in the Czech Republic: as is the case almost everywhere in Central and Eastern Europe, a pro-European attitude goes hand in hand with a strong Atlanticist commitment, even if the Trump episode may have shaken some certainties.

Nevertheless, this Czech response should not be overestimated, as it remains more symbolic than politically significant. We must not forget the opposite response given by Hungarian voters in April 2022. While the Czech presidential election may have started 2023 on a pro-Western and pro-European note, the real milestones that will determine the future direction of Central Europe will be the early parliamentary elections in Slovakia, scheduled for September 2023, and the parliamentary elections in Poland, which are expected to be held in October/November 2023. The latter will decide whether the ‘illiberal’ power of the PiS will become entrenched, as has been the case with Fidesz in Hungary. As for Slovakia, the key question will be whether another controversial political figure from the Visegrád Group, often compared to Andrej Babiš, who is highly divisive and now openly pro-Russian, will return to power: Robert Fico.