site.btaThe Takeaways from Czech Elections for EP: Dissatisfaction with Government and Surge of Far-Left

High voter turnout and the entry in the EP of two parties which are not in the national Parliament, are among the surprises in the Czech elections for European Parliament June 7-8, Tomas Linhart, a journalist with the local newspaper Denik N, said in a BTA interview. The elections also showed some dissatisfaction with the ruling coalition.

"Regardless of the result, the important trend and the important message of this election is that the turnout was around 36%, which is 7% higher than five years ago in the last election. And, also, twice as much as was the turnout 10 years ago, so we can see an increasing trend in in the turnout that was one of the surprises from this election," Linhart said. 

"Speaking of results now, for me it was surprising to see that the two parties or two subjects who are not members of the Czech parliament were able to get to the European Parliament with a fairly a good election result. And one of them is Coalition of two subjects, Přísaha and Motorists, who got around 10% and they were able to get two seats in the European Parliament. The other one is STAČILO!, Communist Party Coalition. They also get 2 seats in the European Parliament."

Asked if the election outcome shows a rise of the far right, he says he "wouldn't call it that way". "One of the far-right parties, which is the SPD, is also one of the big losers of this election. They used to have two seats in the EP. Currently they only have 1% and they are the weakest or the smallest party to get over the threshold to the European Parliament, winning 5.7 points, and only one seat in the Parliament. So I wouldn't say it's a rise in far right, unlike in some other European countries, such as Germany, France, maybe. The Czech election is a bit specific, I would say, the Czech result, but we can see there is a rise in, let's say, far left, possibly. Because the former Communist Party and their coalition STAČILO!, they gained almost 10% of the vote, which is very good for them, which is a huge success. Because currently they are not a parliamentary party.

They are not a member of the Czech parliament, and now they received 10% in the European election, winning two seats. So this is far left, and then there is this I don't know, I don't want to label them as populist, but there is this coalition, Přísaha and Motorists, which we don't know much about their programme. They are not very well-known on a national level. They are not in the Czech Parliament. So, this is a sort of a big question mark, a big unknown, and we will see what their two members of Parliament will be able to do."