The Czech prime minister-designate Andrej Babiš, known as the “Czech Trump”, has said the Visegrád Group needs allies outside of Central Europe to fight illegal migration.
The Eurosceptic billionaire businessman, whose ANO (“yes”) party came first in the parliamentary race on Saturday, also said he intends to challenge the Franco-German-dominated European Union (EU) on its plans for deeper political integration and insisted the Czech Republic would take a more defining role in the bloc.
“We have to prepare topics, propose to the European Council (of EU leaders) what we want to change. Double food quality, [a] solution to migration, the fight against migration and other issues,” Babiš told Reuters.
Referencing the Visegrád Group of Central European nations – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia – who oppose mass migration and the EU’s forced redistribution of Syrian refugees, the anti-euro currency politician said: “The Visegrad group must find other allies, we need Austria and other countries, in the Balkans, or Slovenia, Croatia and perhaps others.”
“We certainly have an ally in Austria, Mr. Kurz, who has the same view as we do on migration,” he added, referring to 31-year-old Austrian centre-right Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz who came first place in national elections last week.
The Czech’s mainstream left Social Democrats achieved their worst result in national history – echoing Austria’s results which saw Kurz’s People’s Party and the anti-mass migration potential coalition partner Freedom Party, which both campaigned on a platform of securing Austria’s borders, deporting failed asylum seekers, and anti-Islamisation, come first and second. The left-wing Social Democrats, which came first in the 2013 elections, came third.
In Austria’s political steer to the right, the country may find itself more closely aligned with the Visegrad Group as Norbert Hofer, the Freedom Party’s former presidential candidate, expressed an interest in Austria joining the “union within a union” – in order to counter the interests of the larger powers of France and Germany.
Before his landslide victory, where the billionaire’s party won nearly three times as many votes as the second runner-up, the liberal-conservative Civic Democratic Party (ODS), Babiš directed comments to Eurocrats in Brussels saying the bloc will fail unless its leaders learn lessons from Brexit.
Speaking on LBC radio Monday morning, Brexit leader Nigel Farage commented on the two consecutive victories for right-wing European politics: “Once again what we see are the traditional parties like the Social Democrats in the Czech Republic – the pro-EU party – collapsing down to seven per cent of the vote.
“The revolution of 2016 is still rolling. It’s still happening. I know that Tony Blair, Hillary Clinton, and others don’t want to believe it but look at the figures – it’s still happening.
“Europe is moving, and not just to the right, but in a very, very firmly Eurosceptic direction. Mrs. Merkel’s folly of saying that anyone that wants to come can come has fundamentally changed European politics.”
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