• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Seeking re-election, Czech PM pledges to keep migrants, Brussels at bay

September 2, 2021 by David Barret Leave a Comment

September 2, 2021

By Robert Muller

USTI NAD LABEM, Czech Republic (Reuters) – Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis launched his populist ANO party’s campaign for re-election on Thursday vowing to keep out migrants and prevent ceding national powers to Brussels.

The central European country took in almost no migrants when a wave of asylum seekers swept the continent in 2015, and echoing Hungary’s leader Viktor Orban, Babis has continued to resist accepting migrants as an important part of his message to the public.

“This is the last chance to protect our national interests, living standards, our culture,” Babis said, launching the campaign for the Oct. 8-9 parliamentary election on his 67th birthday in the northern city of Usti nad Labem.

He said the opposition would hand over national sovereignty to Brussels and “break up” the Visegrad Group alliance with Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, which Babis has praised despite Hungary’s and Poland’s frequent standoffs with European institutions.

“As long as I am prime minister, we will not accept a single illegal migrant,” he said, recalling his resistance to past EU plans to distribute asylum seekers across the bloc.

ANO is leading in opinion polls, but not by enough to win an outright majority, raising the possibility of lengthy post-election haggling over a new administration.

A centre-left coalition and another on the centre-right are the main challengers to Babis. The latest opinion polls gave ANO around 30% support, followed by the two opposition groups with around 20% each and a handful of smaller parties who could become kingmakers.

Babis vowed not to adopt the euro currency and to continue raising pensions, in a nod to ANO’s strongest electoral support base.

The country has suffered the second-highest coronavirus death rate per population in the EU and one of the highest in the world, with over 30,400 deaths so far.

The opposition groups have accused Babis of mismanagement, and they topped opinion polls in the spring when the pandemic filled up hospitals. But their support has since dipped.

The opposition accuse Babis of conflicts of interest as a prime minister and founder of the Agrofert chemicals, farming and media empire. Babis has moved his firms to trust funds, which he says is sufficient to comply with the law.

He also faces a protracted fraud investigation relating to an EU grant, but he denies any wrongdoing.

The government has been helped by a solid economic rebound, with the finance ministry forecasting 3.2% economic growth this year.

It has cut income taxes and raised public sector wages and pensions, which together with the impact of the pandemic have helped widen this year’s expected budget deficit to 7.7%. Private sector economists have called this reckless.

President Milos Zeman has said he would reappoint Babis as prime minister if ANO wins the most votes as a single party, which is almost certain given that the main challengers are coalitions including two and three parties.

This could give Babis months in power after the election even if he struggles to form a ruling majority.

(Reporting by Robert Muller; Editing by Jan Lopatka and Hugh Lawson)

Source Link Seeking re-election, Czech PM pledges to keep migrants, Brussels at bay

David Barret
David Barret

Related posts:

  1. Tajikistan can’t afford to take in Afghan refugees without help -police chief
  2. Russia threatens to fine Apple, Google unless they remove Navalny app, Ifax reports
  3. Polish president imposes state of emergency on Belarus border
  4. Britain’s Raab, in Qatar, cites need to engage with Taliban

Filed Under: News

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • Man Broke Down Wall In His Basement And Discovered An Ancient Underground City That Once Housed 20,000 People
  • Same-Sex Penguin Couple Adopt And Raise Chick – And They’ve All Got 10/10 Names
  • Dolphins May Not “See” With Echolocation, But Instead “Feel” With It
  • Confirmed! Comet 3I/ATLAS Is Indeed An Interstellar Visitor, Quite Different From Its Predecessors
  • At 192, Jonathan – The Oldest Living Land Animal – Has Lived Through 40 US Presidents
  • 300,000-Year-Old Wooden Tools “Made By Denisovans” Discovered In China
  • Why Do Cats Eyes Glow? For The Same Reason Great White Sharks’ Do, Silly
  • G-astronomical News: Michelin-Starred Meal To Be Served On The ISS
  • In 2032, Earth May Witness A Once-In-5,000-Year Event On The Moon
  • Brand New Microscope Designed For Underwater Reveals Stunning Details Of Corals
  • The Atlantic’s Major Circulation Current Is Showing Worrying Signs, But Is Collapse Near?
  • “The Rings Held The Answer”: How We Finally Figured Out Saturn’s Day Length In 2019
  • Mystery Of Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” Solved By A Dentist And A Protractor
  • Asteroid Ryugu’s Latest Mineral Is As Weird As Finding “A Tropical Seed In The Arctic”
  • IFLScience The Big Questions: Are We Living Through A Sixth Mass Extinction?
  • Alien Abduction Or A Trick Of The Mind? A Down To Earth Explanation Of Close Encounters
  • Six Months Into Trump’s Presidency, Americans Report Record Low Pride In Being American
  • TikToker Unknowingly Handles Extremely Venomous Cone Snail And Lives To Tell The Tale
  • Scientists Sequence Oldest Egyptian DNA To Date, From A Whopping 4,800 Years Ago
  • “Uncharted Waters”: Large Hadron Collider Begins Colliding Oxygen For The First Time
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version