The end of the Fial doctrine and the European Parliament

In two months and four days, the European Parliament elections will begin. The Ministry of the Interior announced that thirty groups applied for the elections, which is ten less than five years ago, but the number of coalitions has increased by half. What impact will the election result have on the Czech political scene?

It is always difficult to draw any conclusions from elections in which 17 to 27 percent of citizens participate. This contrasts with parliamentary and presidential elections with more than sixty percent turnout. The type of people that we could describe as political connoisseurs are voting in these elections. Mostly the hard cores of the political parties, voting regardless of how strongly this election result has an immediate effect on their lives.

In general, it can also be said that more middle-class voters of the center and right parties go to the polls than the left. It is not possible to draw far-reaching conclusions from this setting. On the other hand, political competition is not only between parties, but also within parties. The result of the EP elections will tell a lot about their internal balance.

The government STAN goes to the elections independently, but under the name Mayors and personalities for Europe. The Pirates also go separately. The election result will therefore be important in who will have a stronger voice in the selection of the European Commissioner. Prime Minister Petr Fiala recently reconfirmed that the Pirates and STAN coalition has the right to propose a member of the “European government”. The first nominate MEP Marcel Kolaja, the second the unsuccessful presidential candidate Danuša Nerudová. The election result may indicate who will hold the stronger cards in the government.

The result of the STAN movement will also be important in how the other government parties will react to the new strategy of the STAN politicians, which could be characterized by the words “opposition in a coalition”. The Austrian leadership decided several months ago to withdraw from the method of government communication presented by Petr Fiala. The essence of Fial’s doctrine was that all controversial matters are resolved in the government and coalition councils, and only when they are negotiated, they are announced to the public. The STAN movement, partially decimated by the Dosimeter Affair, was looking for a new way to highlight its political difference, and therefore began airing contentious issues even before a compromise was negotiated.

If Vít Rakušana’s campaign called Bez censury might seem like a good idea, which has so far only been successful on social networks, it will be interesting to watch its successors, otherwise the leaders of the European candidate Danuša Nerudová and Jan Farský. They decided to bet on something that could with some exaggeration be described as Euro-huggerism. Even the result of STAN will indicate how strong the social strata are in the Czech Republic, which express unreserved support for the current form of European unification.

The result of the individual parties of the TOGETHER coalition will also be important for their further profiling. If TOP 09 fails, its ex-chairman Kalousek will once again try to form an alternative opposition within the top party. If that fails, they will probably establish a political alternative. A similar fate awaits the People’s Party. In other words, everything under two mandates will strengthen the critical wing, which will want to follow an even more vigorous path of “opposition in a coalition” than STAN.

On the opposition front, it will only be interesting if the ANO movement confirms its dominance and decimates the SPD-type grouping or the Stačilo coalition under the baton of the Communist Party. Actually, the most interesting thing will be if Andrej Babiš is able to convince his senior voters that it makes sense to vote on the distribution of power in the distant European Parliament, which has no direct influence on the redistribution of money from the Czech state budget for pension and social purposes.

So, in the end, the voter turnout will probably decide.