Pirates Party Seeks to Oust Babiš and Embrace Europe

For Bartos, shifting his country closer to the European mainstream is crucial, otherwise, the Czech Republic could be “left behind in a slow group” of nations resisting closer political integration.

“You can’t just stomp your feet in the face of Germany and France,” he said. It’s also time to unite foreign policy, now a victim of a tug-of-war between the pro-Russian president and the rest of the administration, he said.

There’s a long way to go still. A June 6 poll showed Bartos’s coalition winning 26% of the vote, followed by a group of center-right parties. Babis’s ANO party is in third spot with 20% of votes.

After the election, it’s up to President Milos Zeman to pick who will form a government. Traditionally it has been the winner of the election, but the president—a strong ally of Babis—has said he would prefer the biggest single party to have a go at forming cabinet and not a coalition grouping.

But momentum appears to be behind Bartos. The Pirate Party won less than 1% of the vote in the 2010 election under his first stint as leader. It then garnered enough support to enter parliament in 2017 with its vocal advocacy of political transparency and civil rights.

While the party hasn’t spent much of its campaign so far on explaining its foreign policy or how the country might adopt the euro, Bartos said the message is clear: embrace the EU and NATO, especially in the face of threats from Russia and China. “Our anchorage in the EU and NATO has never been questioned within the party,” he said.