Czech president tasks billionaire ex-premier with forming new government

The Czech president on Monday tasked billionaire ex-premier Andrej Babis, whose party won a parliamentary election earlier this month, to lead talks to form the country’s next government.

The ANO party of self-described “Trumpist” Babis topped the October 3-4 poll, gaining 34.5% of the vote and 80 seats in the 200-member parliament, but failing to get an outright majority.

Czech President Petr Pavel on Monday called on Babis to form a new government, saying he had based the decision “on the results of the elections… the progress of negotiations to date, and the positions adopted by the various parliamentary parties”.

Babis, who was prime minister from 2017 to 2021, had begun talks with the far-right party Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) and the right-wing Motorists.

On Monday, he told reporters that talks would continue on Wednesday.

The SPD, which wants a referendum on the Czech Republic leaving the European Union, something that Babis rejects outright, won 15 seats.

The newcomer Motorists, which started out as a single-issue group lobbying against EU plans to phase out the combustion engine, gained 13 seats.

Pavel urged “Babis to present a government composition that in no way weakens the principles of our democratic state as embodied in the Constitution of the Czech Republic”.

The outcome of the coalition talks will likely influence relations between war-torn Ukraine and the Czech Republic, an EU and NATO member country of 10.9 million people.

The outgoing centre-right government provided humanitarian and military aid to Kyiv, which has been fighting a full Russian invasion since February 2022.

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The article has been updated.