FEPS: From Paris to Prague: What lessons for socialists?

Our Deputy Director Martin Michelot commented on the outcome of the Czech election for Socialist Democrats (ČSSD) and also compared them with French socialist party PS and their outcome in the French election.

The historically low score of the Czech social-democratic party (ČSSD), in the recent general elections, was welcomed with shock not only in the Czech Republic but also abroad: how can a government presiding over one of the EU’s most prosperous economies be treated so defiantly in the polls? With a mere 7,27% of votes and 15 MPs, ČSSD has lost, since the last elections in 2013, more than 13% of votes (approximately 648 000 voters), 35MPs and about 4.6M€ of financing. This electoral debacle is comparable in proportion to the loss suffered by the French Socialist Party (hereafter PS), and the future of both parties is now equally in jeopardy, up to the necessity of selling real estate holdings and restructuring the party’s organization and human resources.

The prevalence of the protectionist and Eurosceptical discourse in the campaign put ČSSD at a disadvantage over other candidates carrying this message: first and foremost Andrej Babiš, the winner, towards whom more than a quarter of ČSSD voters flocked, a tendency prevalent especially in voters with lower incomes and those above 60. 

The whole article in English is available here. Whole policy viewspaper is in the right corner in PDF form.

Martin Michelot
Senior Associate Research Fellow

Expertise: NATO and transatlantic security, European foreign policy and defense, French politics, elections and society, Visegrad Four and Central Europe, EU institutional issues