According to Babiš, the outgoing Czech prime minister Petr Fiala, chairman of the coalition party SPOLU, has not only “destroyed” the intergovernmental Slovak–Czech consultations, but also the Visegrád Group (V4) as such by focusing on Poland and ignoring the eastern and southeastern partners of the Czech Republic.
As recently as January of this year, Babiš confirmed to the ČTK agency that, in the event of an election victory, intergovernmental consultations with Bratislava would be resumed.
This, according to Fiala, “symbolic, above-standard instrument” began to weaken during the government of Igor Matovič (then OĽANO, now Hnutie Slovensko) and was eventually suspended due to differing positions of the Czech and Slovak governments on Russia’s foreign policy.
Central Europe is changing its tone
Similarly, following the victory of Babiš’s Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO), relations between Prague and Budapest will also improve, although perhaps only until the parliamentary elections, which as early as 2026 could end the long rule of Fidesz prime minister Viktor Orbán.
In addition to their political positions, a number of other factors link the current Hungarian, the Slovak, and the incoming Czech prime ministers.
For example, all three accepted an invitation in September of last year to celebrate Zeman’s birthday together with Serbian prime minister Aleksandar Vučić, former Slovak president Ivan Gašparovič, and the incumbent president Peter Pellegrini.
What kind of relations would a possible Babiš government build with Warsaw? After all, the post of Polish prime minister is held by the liberal Donald Tusk (Civic Platform), and since 6 August the conservative Karol Nawrocki (with the support of the opposition party Law and Justice) has been president.
While he takes a more cautious stance on aid to Ukraine than the current Polish or the outgoing Czech government, he has been on Russia’s wanted list since 2024 because he was involved in the removal of monuments to the Soviet Red Army in Poland.
Petr Just, a political scientist at Metropolitan University Prague, noted to the Polish portal Gazeta Wyborcza that Babiš has recently toned down his “anti-EU and anti-European” rhetoric and that, due to his political pragmatism, it is difficult to answer many of the questions in advance that arise from his election victory.
Austria-Hungary or the Polish-Lithuanian Union?
Maciej Ruczaj, a Polish political scientist, former director of the Polish Institute in Prague and former ambassador to Slovakia, is convinced that an equals sign can be drawn between the formation of a Babiš government and the prospect of a deterioration in relations with Warsaw.
In an interview for the nonpartisan Christian-democratic Jagiellonian Club, he stated that “Babiš certainly does not have as positive an attitude toward Poland as Fiala. Moreover, a bloc is currently emerging of Hungary, Slovakia and Austria, whose countries have a similar political and ideological DNA.”
Ruczaj therefore does not expect cooperation within the V4 to be consolidated, but rather the emergence of two—at least initially informal—blocs. In his view, the first will be a Polish-Baltic bloc “that openly supports cooperation within NATO and speaks of the Russian threat,” and the second will be the aforementioned Vienna–Bratislava–Budapest axis.
On 8 October, Babiš confirmed at a press conference that the Czech Republic would allocate “not a cent” from the budget for weapons for Ukraine should his party be in government.
Such a development, according to the Polish political scientist, “poses a certain danger to Polish-Czech relations.” At the same time, Ruczaj hopes that the foundations that have been laid—reflected, among other things, in exceptional trade exchange—will prevent Czech-Polish relations from “falling into oblivion and neglect, as happened in the past.”
Territorial claims
The Polish political scientist, however, is probably not counting on the first impulse for a deterioration in bilateral relations coming from Warsaw rather than Prague.
According to an unnamed government source of the Polish portal Fakt, it plans “to resume Polish-Czech consultations at the expert level. Their aim will be to present the parties’ positions on settling the Czech territorial debt.”
According to the portal, Poland will demand from Prague the cession of 368 hectares from the territory of the Czech Republic and their transfer under its administration. Mariana Wernerová, head of the press office of the Czech foreign ministry, told the portal that the ministry “is not releasing any details at the moment.”
The press office of the Polish foreign ministry told the newspaper Štandard that the issue of the “so-called territorial debt” remains current in relations between Poland and the Czech Republic, but that no official negotiations on the subject have taken place this year.
“Our goal remains to resolve this issue in the spirit of good-neighborly dialogue. The time at which an agreement is reached, as well as the form in which it is reached, will be the subject of bilateral negotiations,” the Polish foreign ministry concluded.
The spokesman for the Polish foreign ministry, Paweł Wroński, referred Štandard’s editorial office to the spokesman who replaced him on 1 October—however, he did not respond to the questions, and the only public source reporting that Poland will begin to claim Czech territory immediately after the elections remains the portal Fakt.
Polish sausages
Polish Business Insider, however, published an article on 6 October that outlined future Czech-Polish trade disputes.
Political scientists dealing with geopolitical issues—whom Babiš basically avoided during the election campaign—have hardly addressed this.
As the portal reported, Babiš once called Polish sausages “crap”—as an entrepreneur in the food sector, the winner of the Czech elections can be expected to seek to restrict Polish imports.
It should be remembered that the Czech Republic is currently among the five most important buyers of Polish food products, ranking second only to Germany in dairy products.
If Business Insider’s concerns prove true and Babiš indirectly—through tightened controls—restricts trade between the countries, this could lead to tensions between Prague and Warsaw, which reacts particularly sensitively to the mood of its food producers.
Shortly after the publication of the official election results, Babiš said that the V4 was dead for the time being, “because Fiala buried it.”
“We were the best within the V4. Now the Poles have overtaken us in almost all areas, but we have always cooperated and achieved the best results. And the Poles are, of course, the most important within the V4. And I will definitely strive for good relations,” he concluded.