Czech Populist Babiš Returns to Power with Far-Right Coalition

Andrej Babiš’s ANO move­ment has returned to pow­er in the Czech elec­tions, form­ing a coali­tion with right-wing par­ties. On 4 Decem­ber 2025, the For­eign Pol­i­cy Research Insti­tute report­ed that ANO received 34.5 per­cent in the Octo­ber 2025 par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, form­ing a gov­ern­ment with the SPD, Free­dom and Direct Democ­ra­cy, and the Motorists par­ty. The arti­cle begins:

The Czech Repub­lic, in a wide­ly pre­dict­ed result, returned for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Andrej Babiš and his ANO move­ment to pow­er in par­lia­men­tary elec­tions held in ear­ly Octo­ber of 2025. While the out­come of the polls was clear, sev­er­al key ques­tions remain sur­round­ing the caus­es and ram­i­fi­ca­tions of Babiš’ polit­i­cal resur­gence: What went wrong for the coali­tion gov­ern­ment of out­go­ing Prime Min­is­ter Petr Fiala; How will Babiš and his par­ty rule in a coali­tion with two right-wing par­ties; What role will Pres­i­dent Petr Pavel play in poten­tial­ly mit­i­gat­ing more extreme pol­i­cy pro­pos­als of the new gov­ern­ment, and; What does an ANO-led regime in Prague mean for rela­tions with its neigh­bors, Brus­sels, and Washington?

Read more: https://www.fpri.org/article/2025/12/czech-elections-back-to-the-future-as-andrej-babis-sweeps-to-victory/

Key Points

• SPD Free­dom and Direct Democ­ra­cy par­ty slat­ed to lead Min­istry of Defense despite being an avowed­ly anti-NATO par­ty, with leader Tomio Oka­mu­ra elect­ed speak­er of the low­er house in a secret bal­lot with 107 votes on Novem­ber 5, 2025, ini­tial­ly set to receive the Min­istry of Inte­ri­or before Babiš can­celled the plan.
• ANO senior offi­cial Ale­na Schillerová stat­ed in an ear­ly 2024 tele­vi­sion inter­view that she could­n’t imag­ine ANO form­ing a gov­ern­ment with SPD, as ANO want­ed to with­draw from the EU. Yet SPD is now part of the coali­tion, fill­ing sev­er­al impor­tant posi­tions, includ­ing the defense min­istry and the post of par­lia­ment speaker.
• Motorists for Them­selves, a par­ty cam­paign­ing on an anti-envi­ron­men­tal plat­form, received almost 7 per­cent, with leader Petr Macin­ka nom­i­nat­ed for for­eign min­is­ter after a con­tro­ver­sial June 2025 com­ment that green blood would flow at the Min­istry of Envi­ron­ment if the par­ty joined the cabinet.
• Pres­i­dent Petr Pavel, polling as the nation’s most pop­u­lar polit­i­cal fig­ure, is using con­sti­tu­tion­al author­i­ties to ensure the incom­ing gov­ern­ment does­n’t dam­age rela­tion­ships with NATO and the EU, stat­ing on Novem­ber 17 that, in the absence of a sat­is­fac­to­ry res­o­lu­tion of Babiš’s con­flict of inter­est, ANO should pro­pose a new prime min­is­ter candidate.

Global National Conservative Alliance Expands Across Eastern Europe

The Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance has estab­lished a pow­er­ful East­ern Euro­pean axis, with Hun­gary serv­ing as the oper­a­tional hub for a transna­tion­al coali­tion span­ning the Czech Repub­lic, Poland, Aus­tria, Roma­nia, Bul­gar­ia, and Slo­va­kia. Vik­tor Orbán launched Patri­ots for Europe in June 2024 along­side Aus­tri­a’s Free­dom Par­ty and the Czech ANO move­ment, rapid­ly assem­bling the Euro­pean Par­lia­men­t’s third-largest group­ing. The Ger­man Mar­shall Fund notes that far-right par­ties are now in gov­ern­ment in Croa­t­ia, Fin­land, Hun­gary, Italy, and Slo­va­kia, with addi­tion­al par­ties per­form­ing well in Bul­gar­ia, Czechia, Poland, and Romania.

In the Czech Repub­lic, bil­lion­aire Andrej Babiš’s ANO move­ment claimed its great­est elec­tion vic­to­ry in Octo­ber 2025, steer­ing the coun­try toward a pro-Russ­ian path and threat­en­ing to end sup­port for Ukraine. Babiš has joined forces with Orbán and Slo­va­ki­a’s Robert Fico, whose coun­tries refuse to pro­vide mil­i­tary aid to Kyiv. Poland will become the sec­ond Euro­pean coun­try to host CPAC lat­er this year, amid strong ties between Pol­ish con­ser­v­a­tives and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Roma­ni­a’s Alliance for the Union of Roma­ni­ans trans­formed from obscu­ri­ty in 2020 into a sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal force pro­mot­ing tra­di­tion­al­ist val­ues and uni­fi­ca­tion with Moldova.

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 demands Bul­gar­ia exit the EU and NATO while invok­ing the threat of “globalism”—a major theme through­out the GNCA. The Stiftung Wis­senschaft und Poli­tik observes that if ANO wins pow­er in the Czech Repub­lic, a new far-right Viseg­rád trio could form with Hun­gary and Slo­va­kia. CPAC Hun­gary con­fer­ences unite these forces annu­al­ly, where speak­ers from across East­ern Europe exchange tac­tics for insti­tu­tion­al cap­ture along­side Amer­i­can conservatives.

Exter­nal References:

• No Tidal Wave but Creep­ing Influ­ence: The Far Right in the Euro­pean Par­lia­men­tary Elec­tions – Ger­man Mar­shall Fund
• The Creep­ing Inte­gra­tion of Far-right Par­ties in Europe – Stiftung Wis­senschaft und Politik
• The year of elec­tions: The rise of Europe’s far right – Inter­na­tion­al Bar Association

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