Billionaire businessman Andrej Babis has won parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic, although his populist ANO party fell short of an overall majority.
ANO received just under 35% of the vote, earning them 80 seats in the 200-seat lower house – up from 72 seats four years ago, according to preliminary results.
Babis – who served as prime minister from 2017 to 2021 – is expected to be invited to lead talks on forming a new coalition.
This is a historic success, Andrej Babis announced to cheering supporters at the ANO headquarters in the suburbs of Prague.
He'd entered the building holding aloft a Bluetooth speaker blasting a remix of the 1981 hit 'Sarà perché ti amo' by the Italian pop trio Ricchi e Poveri. The same song resounded across the stage as he accepted the applause. Some colleagues – including the former finance minister Alena Schillerova – danced along to the beat.
It's the pinnacle of my political career! he said, adding that he and his team would now work to make the Czech Republic the best place to live in the European Union.
But while this election has thrown up no great surprises – few had any doubt he would emerge in first place - there are still plenty of questions.
Babis has already begun talks with the two small right-wing eurosceptic parties that managed to pass the 5% threshold: the anti-Green Deal Motorists for Themselves, and the anti-immigrant Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party, led by the Czech-Japanese entrepreneur Tomio Okamura.
Parliamentary maths means he will need an alliance with both to form a government that enjoys a majority in parliament - none of the other parties are likely to work with him.
After giving his acceptance speech he said he wanted ANO to govern alone, rather than create a formal coalition.
ANO will have the most in common with the Motorists. The two already sit in the same European Parliament group – the pro-sovereignty Patriots for Europe, which Babis founded alongside Hungary's Viktor Orban and Austria's Herbert Kickl last year.
Both parties are firmly against Czech households carrying a greater financial burden for cleaner energy, and both oppose the EU's ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars after 2035.
Babis has also categorically ruled out allowing a referendum on either EU or NATO membership – a key policy priority for the SPD.
The ANO leader might have leaned heavily into anti-Ukrainian rhetoric in the final days of the campaign, lambasting the centre-right government for giving Czech mothers nothing, and Ukrainians everything. Czech military support for Ukraine's war effort is likely to change significantly under a Babis administration.
