A new Europe | 25 January 2018

The occasion was a central European conference on the subversive disinformation campaigns of Putin’s Russia (which, incidentally, are real, subtle, and potentially effective). The speaker was an American warning that the central European democracies were in imminent danger of succumbing to the lures of authoritarian populism, even of abandoning democracy itself, under this influence. He cited the probable election of the media billionaire Andrej Babis as prime minister in Czech elections as one sign of this democratic collapse.

A heavy sigh came from a European participant, standing next to me: ‘Why do Americans exaggerate so? Babis may be a sleazy operator with a communist past, but he’s been the Czech finance minister for the last three years and the economy did pretty well. He’s getting votes because he opposes the EU proposal to foist migrants on the Czech Republic. And he’s so mired in legal difficulties over fraud and corruption that he may not be able to form a government even if he wins the election. No one in central Europe believes he will end Czech democracy. It undermines our criticism of Putin to say these things.’

Not a bad analysis, and a brilliant prediction. A month ago Babis’s party won the largest single number of votes, but he couldn’t find coalition partners and had to form a minority government. The new parliament voted (for the second time) to lift his parliamentary immunity on the corruption allegations which place him in danger still. Only last week his government lost a vote of confidence and resigned. He is now negotiating to form a new coalition. Babis is resilient and may well end up on top — but Czech democracy is proving no less resilient.

The umbrella explanation of central Europe is that populists are undermining the EU, and putting democracy there into crisis — that the so-called Visegrad Four — the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia — are descending into authoritarianism.