Andrej Babiš is a populist billionaire who served as prime minister of the Czech Republic from 2017 to 2021 and won re-election on October 3rd-4th 2025. He leads ANO (Action of Dissatisfied Citizens—the acronym also means "yes" in Czech), a party he launched on a pro-business, anti-corruption platform. He is often compared to Donald Trump: a billionaire with a penchant for populist stunts who has been accused of financial wrongdoing (which he denies) and returned to power after a term out of office. During a televised debate he handed Petr Fiala, the incumbent prime minister, a jar of Nutella after Mr Fiala had complained that it costs less in Germany.
In the general election on October 3rd-4th 2025, ANO won 35% of the vote. SPOLU (Together), an alliance of three parties led by Mr Fiala, came a distant second with 23%. STAN, a liberal-conservative alliance, won 11%; the liberal Pirate Party 9%; the hard-right Freedom and Direct Democracy party (SPD) 8%; and Motorists for Themselves, a populist car-owners' party, about 7%. Stacilo (Enough), a pro-Russian hard-left alliance, failed to clear the 5% threshold. Voter turnout was nearly 70%. The new parliament is younger than its predecessor, and 33% of MPs are women, up from 25%.
Mr Babiš's victory means populists have won the latest national elections in each of the four Visegrad countries. He is a member of Patriots for Europe, a populist group in the European Parliament that opposes many Green Deal measures and EU migration and asylum policies.
ANO is an ideological chameleon. Mr Babiš picked up left-wing voters by backing pension rises, and more recently has courted the hard right, joining a group in the European Parliament with Hungary's Viktor Orbán. Tomas Cirhan of Leiden University, who studies the party, notes its shifting positions.
In June 2025 an appeals court restarted a decade-old case against Mr Babiš involving alleged abuse of European Union subsidies by his agriculture firm. He denies all charges.
Mr Babiš rejects NATO's new security-spending norm of 5% of GDP. A deputy foreign minister, Eduard Hulicius, has said he "might be damaging for the Czech position in the Western alliance." Both ANO and its potential coalition partners question the generous help the Czech Republic has provided to Ukraine. During the 2025 campaign he criticised the previous government's generosity towards Ukraine and said the Czech-run ammunition programme would be handed over to NATO. Apart from that, his views are largely in line with the EU's pro-Ukrainian consensus, though the SPD parrots the Russian line. Viktor Orbán, Hungary's prime minister, would like to recruit the Czechs as part of an anti-Ukrainian alliance in central Europe.
ANO does not have a majority in the 200-seat lower house. Centrist parties refused to join a coalition. On November 3rd 2025 Mr Babiš sealed a coalition deal with the SPD and the Motorists, giving his government 108 seats and a rightward lean. The SPD, led by Tomio Okamura—a wise-cracking Japanese-Czech entrepreneur—wants a referendum on leaving the EU and NATO. The Motorists are dead set against the EU's Green Deal. Mr Babiš agrees with the Motorists on scaling back climate measures but will not give the SPD its referendums. In 2017 it took him eight months to cobble together a coalition.
The Motorists' honorary president is a former racing driver who collects Nazi memorabilia and hopes to become foreign minister. Petra Vodova of the University of Hradec Kralove argues Mr Babiš is a pragmatic politician who will probably not substantially change his country's pro-European course, since most of his own companies and assets are in the EU. President Petr Pavel, a former general and staunch defender of the EU and NATO, has the power to refuse ministerial nominations.
Reappraisal, n.: An abrupt change of mind after being found out.