Babiš’s ANO quits ALDE and Renew, leaves behind a’mess’

3 months ago 17

The Czech ANO movement announced on Friday (21 June) its departure from the liberal ALDE and the Renew group in the European Parliament, as its chairman Andrej Babiš, the former Czech prime minister, declared his party would not be able to fulfil its program in its current European political family.

ANO’s departure deals another blow to the already fragmented liberal camp in the European Parliament following the European elections on 6-9 June.

“We run the campaign to fight illegal migration, to change the Green Deal (…). Based on the negotiations, we came to the conclusion that Renew and ALDE simply have different positions than the ANO movement,” Babiš told a press conference in Prague on Friday.

Babiš was a member of the long-standing EU liberal party Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), which partnered with the Renew Europe group, dominated by Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance, in 2019.

ANO obtained 22.3% of the vote in the 2024 European elections, securing six MEPs, making it one of the strongholds of Renew and ALDE.

However, ANO has been at odds with ALDE leadership over the past year with its increasingly Eurosceptic and conservative views.

After strong criticism at one of its congresses, ALDE even sent its co-chairs to Prague to discuss ANO’s ‘liberalism’ with Czech experts in June last year.

Commenting on ANO’s decision to leave the Renew Europe Group, group president Valérie Hayer said it was a “divorce that was long overdue”.

“ANO has chosen a populist path that is incompatible with our values and identity. Over the last month, their divergence from our values has increased exponentially and we witnessed this with great concern.”, she said, adding that the party have turned its back to the group’s firm pro-European convictions and values.

One senior official at Renew said the departure was “a relief for us”, “hard in numbers but good for our values, that matters in the end”.

“We were very worried and unhappy with their shift to the right-wing, a divorce that was long overdue,” the official added.

Difficult times ahead

A source close to ALDE told Euractiv that the Czechs “blamed it on the French”, namely the French president of Renew, Valerie Hayer, as well as the former Belgian prime minister Sophie Vilmes, “for working alone, not consulting, not taking anyone on board”.

“We are a mess now. The group is now fourth, and going down, and the far right is rising. We are a mess at a time when we need unity more than ever,” the ALDE source said.

Following the European elections, the Renew delegation went down from 101 to 80 seats, and are currently fourth, behind the centre-right EPP, the Socialists and Democrats, and the hard-right ECR. which leapfrogged them this week by welcoming new parties.

Another source close to ANO said it has yet to be decided in which political group ANO MEPs will land.

Babiš said the ECR “is certainly not a solution for us. Representatives of other Czech political parties have a big say in the groups and the ECR is certainly not our choice. We will see, maybe a new group will be created”.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]