The Social Democrats — who head a three-party ruling coalition — suffered a heavy blow when Andrej Babiš’ populist ANO movement outperformed them in a number of key regions in 2016. The ČSSD’s share of the vote slipped to 15.4 percent from more than 20 percent, and its support now stands at 12-14 percent in polls.
Now, in an effort to reclaim lost ground in October’s parliamentary election, the party is trying to capitalize on domestic anti-European and anti-immigrant sentiment, which Babiš and President Miloš Zeman continue to successfully exploit. [...]
This threatens to exacerbate a growing East-West divide in the EU, as the four Central European nations move toward a two-speed Union in which they take the slow lane. This specter was raised by Zeman last week when, in response to the European Court of Justice’s rejection of Slovakia and Hungary’s challenge to the migrant quotas, he said: “If worse comes to worse, then it would be better to forego EU subsidies than open the door to migrants.” [...]
According to a poll by the CVVM institute conducted in spring, 61 percent of Czechs are against accepting additional refugees, while nearly three in four said migrants pose as great a threat to national security as ISIS. The country has so far accepted only 12 of its allocated quota of 2,691 immigrants.
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