Expert: Babiš will be seen as pro-Russian over European Parliament group
ANO leader Andrej Babiš recently founded a new group at the European Parliament with Viktor Orban. Regarded as a far-right bloc, Patriots for Europe also now includes the likes of Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders – and this week was accused of being pro-Russian by the Czech prime minister. I discussed Mr. Babiš’s move with Viktor Daněk, deputy director of the think tank Europeum.
“It is obvious that in his former political group he was not very satisfied with the political environment he found himself in. As he often said, it was mere coincidence that he was part of the liberal group.
“Over time I would say that in most cases the opinions of Andrej Babiš and the ANO movement were completely opposite compared to the opinions of the group of liberals, of Renew Europe.
“So it was I think completely expectable that he would try to break out and find a new group.
“In this case I would say it was Viktor Orban who was the main actor. For a long time he was in political isolation, both in the European Parliament and at the European Council, and this was a way to break out of his isolation.
“I guess it was very helpful for Andrej Babiš that one of his closest allies, or his closest ally, was actually in a situation where he wanted to form a new group. So naturally they joined forces.”
The Czech prime minister, Petr Fiala, says that Patriots for Europe are actually serving Russia’s interests, either wittingly or unwittingly. One freshly elected ANO MEP, Jaroslav Bžoch, says he will leave the group if it starts behaving in a pro-Russian way. For his part, Babiš denies that it’s pro-Russian. What’s your response to this question?
“I think it’s necessary to see the details a little better. Because Andrej Babiš is right that he is not pro-Russian.
“If we look at his track record, his government was never pro-Russian. We can maybe look at the Vrbetice case, where his government expelled the highest number of Russian diplomats out of the country.
“But we have to see the context. The majority of the new group are pro-Russian parties. It is actually a new political group consisting of old parties that were previously part of Identity and Democracy group, which was pro-Russian.
“It is quite obvious in the case of Marine Le Pen and others that they have long ties to Russia.
“So the majority of the group is pro-Russian. And in most cases, even though I would say it’s not intentional, when Andrej Babiš, together with Viktor Orban, argues for a quick ceasefire in Ukraine, no matter under what conditions for Ukraine, this is again something that is in Russian interests, not in Czech interests.
“So I’m afraid that Andrej Babiš will be seen from outside, from the rest of Europe, as a pro-Russian politician because he joined a pro-Russian group.
“In many cases his opinions are, in the end, pro-Russian, but nevertheless he never was a pro-Russian politician.”
Patriots for Europe are widely described as a far-right group and include the likes of Le Pen and Geert Wilders. Now that ANO are in bed with them should we regard ANO as a far-right party?
“I would be a bit cautious with using this label. It is true that in the campaign it was very often quite hard to distinguish the difference between the programme of the ANO movement and the programme of the Czech far-right party Freedom and Direct Democracy, because in many cases they were quite similar.
“I think the motivation in the case of the ANO movement is that in Czechia there is quite a huge degree of fragmentation on the far right and I think Andrej Babiš is trying to gain some of the votes from this part of the political spectrum, so that’s very much intentional.
“But it’s not the same kind of ‘far-rightism’, the same kind of extremism, that we saw in the roots of, for instance, the party of Marine Le Pen or the party of Geert Wilders, which is strong anti-Islamism, let’s say, formerly strong anti-Semitism.
“But it is true that Andrej Babiš is moving more and more toward that direction. So we’ll see what happens if he starts to make political points on these sensitive issues.
“At the moment I wouldn’t say that ANO is a far-right party. But we should definitely be cautious about it in the future.”
