Eye of the Beholder

Czechs know very little about the European Union and subsidies from European funds. This eases the situation for Andrej Babiš and anti-European politicians in their portrayals of Brussels as an external threat, according to political scientist Petr Just. Petr Just is the Head of the Department of Political Science and Humanities at the Metropolitan University Prague where he specialises in the comparison of political systems of Czechia, Slovakia (incl. former Czechoslovakia), Central European Countries, select Western European countries and the United States of America.

Luboš Palata: Is it really the case that the more Prime Minister Andrej Babiš has problems with the European Union — whether it is his conflict of interest in drawing European funds or the Stork’s Nest case, where he is accused by the police of misusing subsidies in the amount of 50 million korunas (2 million euros) — the more it helps him with Czech voters? Where did this Czech attitude come from?

Petr Just: If we go deep into the past, we will encounter the classic Czech trauma against influences coming from outside the country. Influences that have an impact on the life of a nation in the middle of Europe. These are, for example, the Munich Agreement of 1938 or when we were under the rule of the Soviet Union.