Czech Business Today
Results of the EP elections – left wing debacle for Czechs
While the centre-right EPP group and the left S&D won the most seats in the May European elections, this is the first time in 40 years that they will not hold a majority. This means that they will have to work more closely with other European Parliament political groups when voting.
On the other hand, more seats were won by the liberal ALDE, newly rebranded as Renew Europe which includes MEPs from Macron’s Movement (an increase from 69 to 105 seats) and by the Greens / European Free Alliance (an increase from 52 to 74 seats). A larger number of MEPs represent nationalist and anti-European parties, yet they won significantly less seats than predicted. For the Czech Republic, the left has clearly fallen behind in these elections. For the first time since 2004, the Czech social-democrats did not get a single seat in the European Parliament. Not even the recently formed parties and movements such as Telička´s HLAS were successful. Czech Pirates and Okamura‘s SPD are heading for the European Parliament for the first time. Pirates will join the Greens/EFA, and the SPD MEPs will join the Eurosceptic ID. The largest number of seats for Czech MEPs (21 seats in total) was attributed to those from ANO 2011 (6) and ODS (4). Furthermore, MEPs from STAN and TOP09 (3), Pirates (3), KDU-ČSL (2), SPD (2) and KSČM (1) were elected. Preferential votes were very popular this time. For example, Mr Vondra from Civic Democratic party (ODS) was elected from 15th place on the candidate list. Similarly, the preferences allowed Hynek Blaško (SPD) to prevail from 8th, Luděk Niedermayer (TOP09) from 3rd and Tomáš Zdechovský (KDU-ČSL) from 3rd. The leader of the Czech Christian Democrats and former JURI Committee Chair, Pavel Svoboda, was not re-elected. Czech MEPs will cooperate with the largest EPP group (TOP09 and KDU-CSL), followed by Renew Europe (ANO 2011), the Greens / European Free Alliance (Pirates), the ECR Conservative Group (ODS) and the ID (SPD).
