Revising the European Green Deal and the EU Migration Pact are among the key issues Czech party ANO (Renew/ALDE), currently polling at almost 30%, wants to address, Klára Dostálová, the party’s lead candidate in the EU elections, told Euractiv Czechia on Thursday.

The ANO party was founded by former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, who openly describes himself as a populist.

His party will be led in the European elections by Klára Dostálová, former minister for regional development and current deputy speaker of the Chamber of Deputies.

“We want a revision of the Green Deal. We want to revisit the Migration Pact so that we can correct some of the things that are wrong from our point of view,” Dostálová said in an interview.

According to Dostálová, Green Deal’s objectives need to be “either re-set or approached a little differently”.

Her comments contradict earlier statements by Valérie Hayer, leader of the liberal Renew group in the European Parliament, of which ANO is a member. Hayer categorically rejected the possibility of reopening any Green Deal dossiers already adopted after the EU elections in June.

The differences between ANO and Renew – and its pan-European party ALDE – are not just about Green Deal’s position. The anti-EU positions and statements of ANO’s chief Babiš, who is a very close ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, have been debated in ALDE, leading to a fact-finding mission to find out whether ANO is still a liberal party.

Dostálová is convinced that “there is no place to discuss the liberality of ANO”.

She pointed out that ANO politicians in the parliament recently voted in favour of same-sex ‘partnerships’ to strengthen the rights of LGBT+ people. However, the LGBT+ organisations were disappointed by the vote, as they wanted to have “marriage” with the same rights as heterosexual couples, and the voted compromise only mentions “partnership”.

Dostálová also said that ALDE’s European liberals understand that ANO politicians sometimes make politically sensitive comments because they want to appeal to domestic voters.

“We call ourselves a family, the ALDE family. So if you are in a family and somebody has a different opinion, that does not mean they are your enemy,” Dostálová said.

She also claims that ALDE’s fact-finding mission – last year’s visit of some ALDE representatives to Prague to discuss the direction of ANO with politicians – went well.

“We are a party with quite a large number of preferential votes; they perceive that, and I was very positively surprised by how openly we were able to talk,” Dostálová said.

ANO’s lead candidate for the EU elections also pointed out that “the right of veto is untouchable” and that the EU should return to its basic tasks, namely the single market.

“I am certainly not in favour of the concentration of power in Brussels,” she said. On the other hand, she supports the idea of giving the European Parliament a new power of legislative initiative.

Dostálová did not say whether she would support Ursula von der Leyen’s continued tenure as Commission president, but she is not satisfied with the current performance of the EU executive.

If she had to grade the Commission, she would give it a “sufficient”, which is the second worst mark in the school system. The only thing she would praise it for is helping Ukraine and condemning Russia as an aggressor.

(Dávid Pásztor, Aneta Zachová | Euractiv.cz)

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