Summer Strife Puts Czech PM’s Populism to the Test

The EU has already frozen non-farm payments to Agrofert — one of the largest Czech recipients of EU aid — and the Czech supreme state prosecutor is looking into whether criminal charges should be brought.

Brussels is likely to levy fines and demand that past aid is repaid, meaning that either the state or Agrofert would have to bear the cost.

The EU does not regard the way that Babis has put Agrofert in trust as creating a sufficient arms-length separation from his business interests, and to continue to receive EU aid he would either have to step down as premier or sell Agrofert.

Babis' reaction has been to rubbish the EU audits and depict them as a conspiracy against the Czech state.

"The audit is very doubtful and I consider it as an attack on the Czech Republic and its interests, as a destabilisation of the Czech Republic," he has said.

So far, opinion polls show little damage to his ANO's party electoral support.

The audits come on top of an existing investigation by the EU Audit office into what it says is a fraudulent application by Agrofert for EU aid towards the cost of building the Stork's Nest recreation and conference centre outside Prague. 

Babis has hinted that the EU probes are some kind of revenge for his opposition to the EU's migrant relocation quotas.

Analysts say the risk now is that he will decide to join Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of Poland's ruling Law and Justice party, in taking an even more belligerent position towards the EU, changing the balance of forces inside the Visegrad Group (V4) of Central European states.

A man waves a Czech flag as thousands of demonstrators gather to protest against Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis in the one of...

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