The visit caused some waves in Prague, three days before the first round of the Czech presidential election, which will take place on January 13 and 14. The former prime minister today in the running for the presidency, Andrej Babis, spoke on Tuesday, January 10, with Emmanuel Macron, in Paris. The Elysée may well have specified that the interview was not an electoral support for the leader of the main Czech opposition party, the latter hastened to mention it, photo in support on his Twitter account . The encounter “focused on the European agenda, Mr. Babis being an important interlocutor within the framework of the Renew political family”justified the entourage of the President of the French Republic, in reference to the liberal group which unites their respective parties within the European Parliament.
At 68, Andrej Babis, who was prime minister from 2017 to 2021, is one of the favorites in the presidential election, whose possible second round will take place at the end of the month if no contender obtains an absolute majority from this week. He is notably opposed to the former chairman of the NATO military committee and former chief of staff of the Czech army, retired general Petr Pavel, and the economist Danuse Nerudova.
Whatever the French authorities say, the meeting is timely for the founder of the ANO party, a formation with both centrist and populist positioning relegated to the opposition since its narrow defeat in the October 2021 legislative elections. In recent months, Emmanuel Macron, whom Mr. Babis considers both a « ami » and like “Europe’s most important politician”, was in fact rather displayed with the current head of government, Petr Fiala, at the head of a coalition of three right-wing parties. France and the Czech Republic have even worked closely together to successively hold the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU) in 2022.
In a much more “techno” style than Mr. Babis, Mr. Fiala had notably agreed to launch in October, in Prague, the European Political Community, an idea sketched out in the spring by the French Head of State in order to bring together the members of the EU, the candidates for accession, led by Ukraine, as well as the United Kingdom, Azerbaijan and Armenia. A way to bring together the whole continent, except Russia.
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The war in Ukraine was part of the discussions between MM. Macron and Babis, the Czech Republic being one of the European countries most engaged against Moscow, despite the pro-Russian positions of the outgoing head of state, Milos Zeman, loyal support of Mr. Babis when he was in charge of the government. The Czech president, in office for ten years, has long been considered by his detractors as a “puppet” of Vladimir Putin, from whom he dissociated himself after the invasion of Ukraine.
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