EU Elections: Fear and Loathing in Czechia

Hostile tone, receptive audience, shift right

While never completely disappeared since the migrant crisis of 2015-2016, anti-immigration rhetoric is back ahead of the elections for the European Parliament on June 6-9.

This has mostly been at the initiative of the SPD as well as another populist but more centrist party, former prime minister Andrej Babis’s ANO, which is polling at more than 30 per cent and on a mission to siphon off votes from the far right, first and foremost SPD supporters.

“We can expect this issue to increase in salience as the European Parliament elections approach,” predicts Otto Eibl, head of the political department at Masaryk University in Brno, “and there won’t be any surprise about who will start talking about it.”

Although refugees, especially from Muslim-majority countries in Africa or the Middle East, are frequently portrayed as a threat to Czech national culture and security, migration itself is often “just used as a rhetorical figure”, according to Eibl, with attacks not necessarily aimed at migrants themselves, “but at political parties and candidates who are labelled as ‘pro-migrant’ or even ‘progressive’,” the political scientist notes.

Yet Vera Honuskova, head of the Centre for Migration and Refugee Law at Charles University in Prague, notes how the tone of the debate in Czechia has progressively “shifted towards increased hostility, especially in verbal attacks against migrants and those who express support for them”.

Both Babis’s ANO, which won the 2017 parliamentary elections on a vocal anti-immigration platform, and Okamura’s SPD – along with a cohort of fringe non-parliamentarian nationalist parties such as SPD ally Trikolora – are out to show voters that the authorities are weak on immigration and care little for the welfare of their own citizens.

And after years of economic turmoil and financial hardship for many, people seem to be listening, with a February survey identifying immigration as one of Czech citizens’ key priorities for the upcoming European elections.

The deputy head of Charles University’s Centre for Migration and Refugee Law, Eliska Flidrova, notes that migration was not a primary issue for the five parties forming the current coalition during the 2020 general election when it won power from Babis’s ANO. “They did not use it primarily to win votes,” she says.

However, suffering from a vertiginous drop in support, the coalition government has been forced on the defensive and today pledges never to accept mandatory migrant relocation quotas from the EU – “one of the few things on which we agree with the current opposition”, according to Interior Minister Vit Rakusan.

Pledging bolder steps to curb illegal migration at the end of last year, Prime Minister Fiala said that: “As we see it, the key to success is better protection of the EU’s external border, a better migrant-return policy, prevention of illegal migration through cooperation with countries of origin, and more effective steps against people smugglers.”

Government officials also insist that border checks introduced over the autumn and winter months with several neighbouring countries in Central Europe, including Slovakia, have helped crack down on smugglers and illegal migrants.

It’s unknown exactly how many migrants illegally enter Czech territory, a mere transit country for most, but official data, based on those numbers arrested, showed that less than 14,000 people were detained last year, down more than half from 2022.