With surveys favoring populist billionaire Andrej Babis to return to power on promises to boost development and raise wages while cutting funding for Ukraine, Czechs started voting on Friday in an election that is expected to topple their center-right administration.
The move might make it more difficult to get an agreement on climate policies and would strengthen the populist anti-immigration movement in Europe. Following the global pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Czechs experienced spikes in inflation and have only recently recovered from one of the biggest declines in real incomes in Europe.
Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s Spolu coalition and its liberal government allies, who prioritized reducing the budget deficit, have suffered as a result. On Friday, Babis distributed doughnuts in the industrial city of Ostrava and urged his supporters not to believe that anything had been won yet as both candidates made desperate pleas to the electorate.
In contrast to Fiala’s administration, which has been steadfastly in support of Kyiv since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Babis, whose ANO party held double-digit leads in the majority of opinion polls, is an ally of Viktor Orban of Hungary in the Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament.
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