Czech election: Could the victory of the Andrej Babis lead to the collapse of the EU?
THE ELECTION of Czech tycoon Andrej Babiš has delivered a blow to the EU, but could it lead to the collapse of the European bloc?
Andrej Babis wins parliamentary election in the Czech Republic
Populist Andrej Babiš has been painted as a Czech Donald Trump who is ready to join forces with Poland and Hungary in taking down the EU.
Mr Babiš stormed to victory in the Czech election on Friday and Saturday amid speculation that he could bring the bloc to the brink of collapse.
But although Mr Babiš has railed against EU migration policy and the eurozone, there are signs he may not be as Eurosceptic as Brussels fears.
Seán Hanley, a senior lecturer in comparative Central East European politics at UCL, said that Mr Babiš is presented as an 'anti-EU populist' in the media.
“Media commentary has painted Babiš as a ‘Czech Trump’, a nationalistic, anti-EU populist itching to team up extremist parties to tip yet another Central European country on a path toward illiberal democracy,” he said.
Mr Hanley said that he has turned against the euro, “harrumphed” against EU migration policies and used fear of refugees to play to public opinion.
“But look more carefully and we find that Babiš is no hard Eurosceptic," Mr Hanley said.
“Despite the blunt confrontational language, his Euroscepticism is, in substance, little different from that of most Czech mainstream parties and designed partly to placate public opinion.
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“As the head of a big conglomerate in a small country, he unsurprisingly favours EU market, scientific and infrastructural integration, rules out introducing the euro only for the time being, and chaffs against overly-bureaucratic regulation potentially constraining national sovereignty and competitiveness.
“Although not without a sinister authoritarian streak, Babiš’s power-hungry technocratic populist vision is, in short, more a mix of Harvard Business School and nomenklatura capitalism, than the counter-cultural, anti-Western conservative nationalism on show in Hungary or Poland.”
Mr Babiš is a plain spoken anti-establishment figure but his technocratic impulses are clear in the way that he has vowed to run the Czech Republic “like a family firm”.
The businessman has been compared to Hungary's controversial Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who has riled the EU with his defiant anti-migrant stance.
Mr Hanley added: “Despite wishful British Eurosceptic thinking, however, Babiš lacks both the ideology and, in all probability, the political reach to be a Czech Orbán or a Czech Trump.”
On Saturday the billionaire insisted that his party was pro-European despite reservations about talk of a two-speed Europe that could sideline countries that do not have the euro.
"It is not true that we are any threat. We are pro-European!" Mr Babis said on Saturday. "I am ready to fight for our interests in Brussels."
The EU fears that the Czech Republic could become as confrontational as Poland and Hungary - the two other members of the Visegrád Group alliance in Central Europe.
But Emily Mansfield, Europe analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said that Mr Babiš’ Eurosceptic rhetoric was in fact “posturing” in the run up to the election.
She said: “Babiš is a very pragmatic person and he is aware it is an effective way to appeal to the public.
“However, he himself has significant business interests in the EU, particularly in Germany. He’s not going to jeopardise the link at all.”
The charismatic politician set up his own movement called ANO and served as the Czech foreign minister until he was forced out in May amid a spat with the Prime Minister.
The ANO is currently in a dysfunctional three-way coalition with their main rival the Czech Social Democratic Party and the Christian Democrats.