Andrej Babiš has met the Czech president, Petr Pavel, and is to hold talks with other party leaders as the billionaire populist begins the tricky job of trying to form a stable government after his ANO (Yes) party won parliamentary elections, but failed to secure a majority.
Final results showed ANO won 34.5% of the vote, held on Friday and Saturday, translating to a provisional 80 seats in the 200-member parliament. The centre-right Spolu coalition of the outgoing prime minister, Petr Fiala, came second on 23.4%.
“I have promised to … show the president a solution that will be in line with Czech and European laws,” Babiš, a polarising figure whose previous premiership from 2017 to 2021 drew mass protests, said as the talks got under way on Sunday.
Pavel said afterwards that he would not attempt to appoint a new government until November at the earliest to give politicians time for what are likely to be difficult and protracted negotiations.
While he hailed the “historic result” as “the absolute peak” of his political career, Babiš has significant hurdles to clear both to become prime minister, and to win and maintain support for the single-party minority government he has said he wants.
Analysts have also said that even if he succeeds, Babiš is unlikely to join the populist, authoritarian prime ministers of Hungary and Slovakia, Viktor Orbán and Robert Fico respectively, as a fully fledged member of the EU’s awkward squad.
Mainstream parties have ruled out entering any coalition with ANO, forcing Babiš to seek backing from two fringe – and potentially fractious – rightwing groups, Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) and Motorists, to win a parliamentary confidence vote.
“We will lead talks with the SPD and the Motorists, and seek a single-party government led by ANO,” Babiš, the country’s seventh-richest man with a net worth estimated at $3.9bn (£2.9bn), said on Sunday.
ANO campaigned on pledges of faster growth, higher wages and pensions and lower taxes. It also promised to fight the EU’s migration pact and green deal, and to end the shells-for-Ukraine “Czech initiative”, instead backing Kyiv solely through the EU.
The party shares some common ground with the far-right SPD, which is also opposed to EU climate and immigration policies, as is the smaller rightwing Motorists party.
But the Moscow-friendly, anti-Nato SPD also campaigned on a “Czexit” promise to pull the Czech Republic out of the 27-member bloc, which Babiš has rejected out of hand. He has insisted repeatedly his party is “pro-European, and pro-Nato”.
Both the Motorists and the SPD have said they are open to talks with ANO, but it is unclear how far either party is willing to support a minority ANO government rather than seek a binding coalition accord – or how long their support could last.
Analysts noted that the SPD’s vote share was significantly lower than the 13% it was forecast to win before the election, meaning its negotiating position in talks on any confidence-and-supply deal may not be as strong as previously imagined.
Even assuming Babiš is eventually able to present Pavel – who defeated the billionaire to become president in elections held in 2023 – with a multiparty agreement representing a 101-seat majority in parliament, his problems may not be over.
Pavel said before the election that he would not appoint any ministers who sought Czech withdrawal from the EU or from Nato. He also said he was taking legal advice on a possible conflict of interest concerning Babiš’s sprawling business interests.
Babiš has promised to resolve the problem, but Pavel has the constitutional right to reject him as prime minister if he considers the solution inadequate. That is unlikely to happen, but may give the billionaire pause for thought about his proposed cabinet.
European far-right leaders including Orbàn, who posted on social media that “truth has prevailed”, and France’s Marine Le Pen, who said “patriotic parties” were being “called to power … all over Europe”, rushed to congratulate Babiš.
However, although ANO sits in the far-right Patriots for Europe group in the European parliament and Babiš has called himself an admirer of Orbàn, the EU’s disruptor-in-chief, it is unclear how far he will align himself with the anti-EU camp.
Analysts say Babiš’s politics are more pragmatic than ideological and that he is unlikely to pick a serious fight with Brussels as long as the Czech Republic needs EU funds and the billionaire’s businesses continue to benefit from the bloc.
Czech institutions are also likely to constrain the billionaire at home, with radical shifts likely to be hindered by the senate, which can veto any proposed electoral law or constitutional change and must approve judges appointed to the constitutional court.
