Political developments

During October there were elections to the regional assemblies and one-third of the Senate in the Czech Republic.The outcome can be summarized as follows: The Association of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) movement of Andrej Babiš had the best showing in the regional contests, but their potential coalition partners lost ground, and as a consequence, ANO will be part of coalition governments in just some regions. Opposition parties gained strength and the left absolutely failed. In the Senate elections, the clear victor was the Mayors and Independents (STAN) movement, and we can call the Social Democrats the most defeated, as they did not defend a single seat.  Both elections were marked by concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic, and many people perceive the outcome to be a kind of overture to the elections to the Chamber of Deputies that await the Czech Republic next year.

In Slovakia in February 2018 the journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová were murdered. Their killing has brought about a fundamental shift of political power in the country, leading to the prosecution of high-profile defendants, including the man accused of ordering the murder. Three years later we can state that even though the man who ordered the hit has not been punished, there is a chance that this crime will eventually result in an improvement in the administration of justice in the country.

“I will not bring 18-year-old Afghans to the Czech Republic because I consider it a security risk,” said Czech Interior Minister Jan Hamáček of the Social Democrats at the beginning of the year, when the country was asked to take in 40 unaccompanied migrants and refugees from Greece’s overflowing refugee camps. He had reiterated different variations on that position before then and has repeated them since, most recently after the blaze that razed the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos to the ground, leaving thousands of unaccompanied minors and hundreds of parents accompanying their children homeless.

After the Croatian election, significant novelties have appeared on both sides of the spectrum, including emergence of sizeable green force in parliament.

The ongoing pandemic of COVID-19 disease has brought about an extraordinary situation. Although the past decades have brought numerous challenges like terrorism or the climate change, the global spread of a disease for which there is neither a cure nor vaccination available is something that political leaders have no experience in tackling.

The consequences of COVID-19 for society are yet to be studied. However, we can already predict the impact of the pandemic on the situation of women in Ukraine. Their families and their wellbeing, especially that of single mothers, are at risk.

February 2020 will be written into the modern political history of Slovakia as a month with a great turning point which combined in a special way two dramatic themes in the internal political development of the country. The first area was a two-year civil society effort to make a major social change after the investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová were murdered in February 2018 by order of the mafia. The second area was the overwhelming victory of the opposition over the dominant party, Smer-SD, in the parliamentary elections of 2020.

Slovak political landscape is exceptionally fragmented ahead of February 29 general elections. One of the last opinion polls published before the election polls moratorium foresees eight parties to be represented in the parliament. However, conceivable scenarios include 6 to 12 parties possibly entering the parliament.  This pre-election analysis was published by EuroPolicy in cooperation with the Prague office of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.