Billionaire’s Party Wins Czech Election in Populist Comeback Victory

Four years ago, it seemed that the days in pol­i­tics of bil­lion­aire Andrej Babiš were num­bered. The ANO move­ment Babiš cre­at­ed (an abbre­vi­a­tion of Action of Dis­sat­is­fied Cit­i­zens that means “Yes” in Czech) to counter main­stream polit­i­cal par­ties was defeat­ed in Octo­ber 2021 by a coali­tion of pro-West­ern groups. The pop­ulist leader was expect­ed to make good on his promise to quit, rather than end up in oppo­si­tion. Instead, he imme­di­ate­ly launched an aggres­sive cam­paign blam­ing the rul­ing coali­tion for every prob­lem, from the ener­gy cri­sis to soar­ing infla­tion. He promised to revoke a much-resent­ed increase in the state pen­sion age and to end help for Ukraine, while ridi­cul­ing Prime Min­is­ter Petr Fiala for being a bet­ter prime min­is­ter of Ukraine than of Czechia. On Sat­ur­day, ANO claimed its great­est elec­tion vic­to­ry since its foun­da­tion in 2011.

Read more: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/populist-party-of-billionaire-andrej-babis-wins-big-in-czech-parliamentary-election

ANO (Action of Dis­sat­is­fied Cit­i­zens) is a Czech cen­trist-pop­ulist move­ment found­ed in 2011 by bil­lion­aire Andrej Babiš, ini­tial­ly posi­tioned as an anti-cor­rup­tion and tech­no­crat­ic alter­na­tive to the Czech polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment. Over time, the party’s stance has shift­ed toward nation­al­ist pop­ulism, char­ac­ter­ized by anti-elite and Euroscep­tic rhetoric, as well as a grow­ing align­ment with right-wing narratives.

Read more here.

Key Points

• Babiš’s vic­to­ry deprives Ukraine of a staunch sup­port­er and is expect­ed to join the ranks of Vik­tor Orbán of Hun­gary and Robert Fico of Slo­va­kia, whose coun­tries refuse to pro­vide mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine.
• The pop­ulist leader said he was plan­ning to aban­don an inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized Czech ini­tia­tive that acquires artillery shells for Ukraine on mar­kets out­side the EU and oppos­es NATO’s com­mit­ment to increase defense spend­ing significantly.
• Babiš has already joined forces with Vik­tor Orbán to cre­ate a new alliance in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, called Patri­ots for Europe, which rep­re­sents hard-right groups crit­i­cal of EU migra­tion and cli­mate policies.
• With­out a major­i­ty in the low­er house, Babiš’s minor­i­ty Cab­i­net would need tac­it sup­port from the Free­dom and Direct Democ­ra­cy anti-migrant par­ty and the right-wing Motorists for Them­selves to win a manda­to­ry par­lia­men­tary con­fi­dence vote.

The Global National Conservative Alliance’s Expansion Across Eastern Europe: Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria

Hun­gary serves as the oper­a­tional cen­ter for an ide­o­log­i­cal coali­tion unit­ing right-wing and far-right move­ments world­wide under shared prin­ci­ples of nation­al sov­er­eign­ty, cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and oppo­si­tion to glob­al insti­tu­tions. Budapest hosts annu­al CPAC con­fer­ences that bring togeth­er Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives with fig­ures from across Europe, includ­ing for­mer Czech Prime Min­is­ter Andrej Babiš and for­mer Sloven­ian Prime Min­is­ter Janez Janša, described as “known for embrac­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.” Hun­gar­i­an Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orbán has posi­tioned his nation as the mod­el for illib­er­al gov­er­nance, deliv­er­ing speech­es where he likened lib­er­al­ism to a “virus” threat­en­ing tra­di­tion­al soci­ety while urg­ing far-right activists to “play by our own rules.” The net­work’s infra­struc­ture extends through edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions that dis­sem­i­nate cul­ture war themes aligned with Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions, with facil­i­ties reach­ing beyond Hun­gary’s bor­ders into neigh­bor­ing countries.

Roma­ni­a’s nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment surged dra­mat­i­cal­ly through the sur­pris­ing emer­gence of the Alliance for the Union of Roma­ni­ans, trans­form­ing from obscu­ri­ty in 2020 to become the nation’s sec­ond-largest par­ty by 2024. AUR leader George Simion embod­ies MAGA-style pol­i­tics, pro­mot­ing what polit­i­cal ana­lysts describe as “anti-sci­ence, Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ism, and sov­er­eignism” while build­ing cam­paigns around uni­fi­ca­tion with Moldo­va and oppo­si­tion to glob­al­ist elites. Accord­ing to For­eign Pol­i­cy, “Simion shares much in com­mon with Hun­gary’s Vik­tor Orban and Slo­va­ki­a’s Robert Fico,” rep­re­sent­ing a broad­er pat­tern of nation­al­ist pol­i­tics spread­ing across the region. West­ern aca­d­e­mics sup­port­ing rightwing cul­ture war themes have appeared at Math­ias Corv­i­nus Col­legium facil­i­ties in Cluj-Napoca, where Roman­ian stu­dents claim a “big wave” reject­ing the Unit­ed States and mov­ing toward Rus­sia because of “wok­ism Amer­i­ca is export­ing to Romania.”

Bul­gar­ia mir­rors these pat­terns, with pro-Russ­ian par­ties, includ­ing the far-right Revival move­ment, secur­ing approx­i­mate­ly 15% of votes in the 2022 elec­tions. Revival leader Kostadin Kostadi­nov open­ly demands Bul­gar­ia exit the EU and NATO while invok­ing the threat of “glob­al­ism.” Accord­ing to CEPA, Revival passed leg­is­la­tion ban­ning LGBT “pro­pa­gan­da” in schools that is “near­ly iden­ti­cal to Russ­ian and Hun­gar­i­an anti-LGBT+ pro­pa­gan­da laws,” while Bloomberg reports the par­ty signed a coop­er­a­tion agree­ment with Putin’s Unit­ed Rus­sia par­ty in April 2025, “deep­en­ing anti-estab­lish­ment ties with Moscow.”

These coor­di­nat­ed strategies—combining anti-LBGTQ leg­is­la­tion, attacks on civ­il soci­ety, and Russ­ian alignment—reveal what rep­re­sents a broad­er right­ward shift across Euro­pean pol­i­tics, with Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Con­fer­ences strength­en­ing transna­tion­al ties between East­ern Euro­pean move­ments and Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives embrac­ing illib­er­al gov­er­nance as a template.

Exter­nal References:
— George Simion Is Part of Roma­ni­a’s Very Strange Far Right—and Soon Could Be Its President
— The Creep­ing Putiniza­tion of Bulgaria
— Hun­gary inspires U.S. con­ser­v­a­tives. Its leader is seen as run­ning a ‘dic­ta­tor­ship’

Dis­claimer:
The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are gen­er­at­ed using AI and are intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.