{"id":2461,"date":"2018-09-18T16:16:17","date_gmt":"2018-09-18T15:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/?p=2461"},"modified":"2025-05-27T16:23:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T15:23:40","slug":"czech-prime-minister-andrej-babis-supports-orban-and-severely-disavowed-his-meps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/2018\/09\/18\/czech-prime-minister-andrej-babis-supports-orban-and-severely-disavowed-his-meps\/","title":{"rendered":"Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babi\u0161 supports Orb\u00e1n and severely disavowed his MEPs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babi\u0161 supports Orb\u00e1n and severely disavowed his MEPs \u2013 an illustration of the youth of the Visegr\u00e1d Group 2.0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Czechia<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 The adoption of the Sargentini report against Hungary (challenged by the Hungarian government\u00a0because of the method of calculating the required 2\/3 majority) has caused political waves throughout the week in several political parties in Europe. One can think about the Republicans in France, of whom only 3 of the 20 MEPs voted against the Sargentini report, which the political competitors of LR on the right (Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, and the National Rally) use as argument for the start of the campaign for next year\u2019s European elections.<\/p>\n

But the fracture line has actually been seen all over Europe, and not only among the EPP elected representatives. This is particularly the case in the Czech Republic.<\/p>\n

Babi\u0161 settles his accounts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shortly after the adoption of the vote,\u00a0the analysis proposed by the Visegr\u00e1d Post\u00a0of the behavior of deputies according to their political group, their country or the orientation of their government, showed that a certain number of elected representatives whose parties are often identified as Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s allies (because of concordant positions on the migration topic in particular) did not side with the Hungarian Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

Among the surprising defections, those of the Czech MEPs of ANO 2011, party of the Prime Minister Andrej Babi\u0161, a billionaire businessman that could be described as liberal-populist. His MEPs, however, sit in the ALDE group chaired by Guy Verhofstadt, opponent of Viktor Orb\u00e1n and supporter of liberal-libertarian Europe and the open borders policies.<\/p>\n

Due to the hostile position on immigration and quotas, the vote of MEPs from Andrej Babi\u0161\u2019s party was surprising. Quickly, comments rose about this vote in Czech Republic, especially since out of a total of 21 Czech MEPs there were still 10 votes against the Sargentini Report (including those of the Communist Party\u2019s MEPs) for 1 abstention, 1 absent during the vote, and 9 votes in favor.<\/p>\n

In 2014, the ANO 2011 won 4 MEPs: Pavel Teli\u010dka (also Vice-President of the European Parliament), Petr Je\u017eek, Dita Charanzov\u00e1 and Martina Dlabajov\u00e1. In 2018, if they still sit in the ALDE group, two of them left the party of Andrej Babi\u0161: Pavel Teli\u010dka and Petr Je\u017eek.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Andrej Babi\u0161 spoke quickly to reaffirm his support for Viktor Orb\u00e1n.\u00a0Prauding Orb\u00e1n\u2019s action for its action against illegal immigration and respect for the rules (defense of the Union\u2019s external borders): \u201cWe are allies and the V4 is working\u201d.<\/p>\n

He has clearly disassociated himself from the vote of the ANO MEPs, stating that they would no longer be MEPs next year, regretting their vote but stating that their vote is binding only on them.<\/p>\n

Among the other MEPs of Czech Republic who voted for the Sargentini report is Miroslav Poche of the Czech Social Democratic Party (\u010cSSD). \u010cSSD is the minority coalition partner of the ANO. Miroslav Poche was expected to hold the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Babi\u0161 government: \u201cMr Poche will not be minister, it is a futile debate\u201d commented Babi\u0161.<\/p>\n

A demonstration that the Visegr\u00e1d Group 2.0 is still young<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a reminder, the Visegr\u00e1d Group created in 1991 had achieved in 2004 all of its initial objectives with the integration of its members (Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland) into NATO and the European Union. Its usefulness and activity was reduced, especially as tensions persisted within it (in particular between Hungary and Slovakia on the question of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, with occasional escalations often created artificially by political strategies).<\/p>\n

It was only in 2015 that the Visegr\u00e1d Group returned to the forefront with the migration crisis and the European Union\u2019s desire to introduce a system of mandatory relocation quotas in all countries of the European Union.<\/p>\n

This sudden awareness of common interests between the countries of Central Europe has reactivated a Visegr\u00e1d Group more or less forgotten and neglected, and which knows a mutation in order to become a kind of union defending the interests of these countries.\u00a0economically exploited within the European Union\u00a0(first and foremost by Germany).<\/p>\n

Beyond the sensitive migratory issue \u2013 which is in fact only relative since almost all of the migrants are not keen to settle in low-wage Central European countries \u2013\u00a0the Visegr\u00e1d Group has also mobilized itself on the issue of the quality of industrial products\u00a0distributed in their countries (often of lower quality and at least of equal prices).<\/p>\n

To get back to the Czech situation mentioned above, we must remember that the last European election was held in May 2014, before the migration crisis of 2015 and the reactivation of Visegr\u00e1d.<\/p>\n

MEPs from these countries were therefore elected before 2015, which may explain why a number of them act outside the political directives of their parties on the desire for political solidarity between the heads of government of the V4 countries, or that their political loyalty goes more to the parliamentary group in which they sit than to the national directives.<\/p>\n

The European election of 2019 could therefore be a moment for matching the composition of party delegations to the European Parliament and the will of the national political parties that nominate them to sit in Brussels. In other cases, it will also be the time when the masks will definitely fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babi\u0161 supports Orb\u00e1n and severely disavowed his MEPs \u2013 an illustration of the youth of the Visegr\u00e1d Group 2.0 Czechia\u00a0\u2013 The adoption of the Sargentini report against Hungary (challenged by the Hungarian government\u00a0because of the method of calculating the required 2\/3 majority) has caused political waves throughout the week in several<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"acf":{"subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}