Turnout: 28.72%
About this election
The 2019 European Parliament election in Czechia, held on 24–25 May 2019, was won by Andrej Babiš's governing ANO movement, which finished comfortably ahead of the centre-right opposition. The vote, held while ANO led the national government, confirmed the party's dominance of Czech politics and the continuing fragmentation of the opposition into several mid-sized parties.
Czechia elects its members of the European Parliament in a single nationwide constituency by proportional representation using the D'Hondt method, with a 5% threshold and optional preferential votes for individual candidates. In 2019 the country returned 21 MEPs. Because the whole country forms one district, European elections offer a relatively clean test of national party strength — though turnout is markedly lower than in domestic contests, which tends to reward parties with the most committed electorates.
ANO campaigned on Babiš's record in government and a pragmatic, mildly Eurosceptic line, while facing protests at home over his conflicts of interest. The Civic Democrats (ODS) pressed a reformist centre-right message, the Pirates ran a strongly pro-European and anti-corruption campaign, and the TOP 09–Mayors alliance appealed to liberal, pro-EU voters. The far-right SPD campaigned against immigration and the EU, while the Christian Democrats and Communists fought to hold their ground.
ANO won 21.18% and six of the 21 seats. The Civic Democrats (ODS) took 14.54% and four seats, the Pirates 13.95% and three, and the TOP 09–STAN alliance 11.65% and three. The far-right SPD won 9.14% and two seats, the Christian Democrats (KDU-ČSL) 7.24% and two, and the Communists (KSČM) 6.94% and one. The Social Democrats, in office nationally, fell below the threshold and won no MEPs — an early sign of the collapse that would follow. Turnout was 28.7%.
The result reinforced ANO's command of Czech politics midway through Babiš's term while exposing the weakness of the traditional governing left. The strong showings of the Pirates and the centre-right alliances foreshadowed the opposition's strategy of consolidation that would, two years later, narrowly deny Babiš a second term in the 2021 legislative election. ANO's MEPs would later leave the liberal group and help found the nationalist Patriots for Europe.
European Parliament elections are the lowest-turnout tier of Czech politics, and 2019 was no exception: fewer than three in ten eligible voters took part. Even so, that was a marked improvement on the historic low of 2014, mirroring the EU-wide turnout recovery of 2019, when participation rose across most member states for the first time since direct elections began in 1979. Political scientists file such contests under 'second-order elections' — votes in which little executive power is at stake, turnout falls, governing parties are judged on national performance, and small or protest parties outperform. The 2019 Czech result shows the pattern clearly: mid-sized opposition parties collectively won most of the seats even as ANO topped the poll.
The 21 Czech seats scattered across the new Parliament's groups: ANO's MEPs joined the liberal Renew Europe group (before their later departure), ODS anchored itself in the eurosceptic ECR alongside Poland's governing party, the Pirates joined the Greens/EFA, and the Christian Democrats, TOP 09 and STAN mayors sat with the EPP, while the Communists and the far-right SPD occupied the chamber's opposite margins. The spread meant Czech influence in the new Parliament was distributed across half a dozen groups rather than concentrated in any one of them.
The 2019 election was the one that ended the decades-old combined majority of the centre-right EPP and centre-left S&D across the EU, forcing them into a wider coalition with the liberals and lifting green parties across Western Europe. Czechia sat slightly apart from that wave — its green surge went to the Pirates instead — but the fragmentation of its delegation matched the fragmentation of the new Parliament itself.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.