A recent internal poll of the TOP 09 alliance shows that Miroslav Kalousek, the party’s former leader, has the best chance of winning the upcoming European elections. He has already announced that he has collected several nomination papers from the party’s local bodies and intends to apply for a place in the joint coalition candidate list. However, Kaloska’s actual candidacy depends on the so-called TOP 09 executive committee, and party leader Markéta Pekarová Adamová is very reserved about it.
According to sources of the Echo24 newspaper, the party recently commissioned a survey by the Ipsos agency on the prospects of individual personalities, and Kalousek scored some points in it.
Best “survey” election results. In the last elections for the European Parliament, Lüdek Niedermayer received more than 67 thousand preferential votes among all the candidates from the entire country. In addition, he does an excellent real job in Parliament, his attendance at meetings is high, he communicates effortlessly without translation. These are the qualities that our other candidates must possess. In my opinion, these should be promising personalities who have the ambition to establish themselves in the EP even considering their candidacy for the next term. I do not see the European Parliament as a political pension.
So, I can’t speak for the entire executive, but many people don’t understand that after the very failed 2017 election, the parties came together and resigned as a member of parliament with a party leader who didn’t care much about European issues.
In particular, he is accepted by 24 percent of those questioned, while Lüdek Niedermayer, the leader of the Top 09 for European elections, received only 13 percent in the survey. Jiří Pospíšil, another former party leader and current MEP, will beat Niedermeier by a few percentage points. Kalousek is still better than number one candidate Aleksandar Vondra (ODS), who takes less than two percentage points, according to the editor.
Kalousek declined to comment further on a possible candidacy. I don’t want to cheat the organizations that referred me. I wanted to thank them. I don’t want to say I don’t care about them. But the Republican caucus will decide whether I will run,” he told the editors.
Pekarová Adamová, the leader of the party, now stands unequivocally against Kalousko and, on the contrary, for Niedermayer. “Election results are the best survey. In the last elections for the European Parliament, Lüdek Niedermayer received more than 67 thousand preferential votes among all the candidates from the entire country. In addition, he does an excellent real job in Parliament, his attendance at meetings is high, he communicates effortlessly without translation. These are qualities that our other candidates must have as well,” he told Echo24.
“So, I can’t speak for the whole executive, but for many it doesn’t make sense to resign as a deputy so that the parties can come together in a coalition. Party leader after the very failed elections in 2017, and he never gave much to European issues,” he adds in Kalouska’s speech. . We wrote more about the survey and the chances of individual candidates in the next text.
Limited ringing
If Kalousek were to actually run, the Spoluk parties agreed that he would have to fit into the tenth spot on the candidate list. ODS, TOP 09 and the People’s Party want to prevent too much circling and jumping of candidates from the back seats, so all candidates must appear in the top ten.
But the pressure is already on. After Vondr, Veronika Vrecionová from ODS should be second. MEP Niedermayer should be third and MEP Tomáš Zdechovský of KDU-ČSL should be fourth.
From the fifth place, ODS – TOP 09 – Individual positions in the People’s Party line should always go to individual parties. Apparently, serious negotiations took place not only about the head of the candidate, but also about the lower positions that did not reach the European Parliament. The Spoluk parties now have a total of eight MEPs, so there is a risk of losing this seat around. TOP 09 looks like the sixth and ninth place, where Kalousek or others should appear.
At the end of October, the ruling parties ODS, KDU-ČSL and TOP 09 announced that they would run together in the Spolu coalition for the European Parliament next year, as in the last parliamentary elections. Speaking to reporters then, the Prime Minister said that the entire list of candidates is yet to be compiled. However, the parties have already decided on the main leader, which is the current ODS MEP Alexander Vondra.
Kalousek was originally an MP for the People’s Party, which he also led from 2003 to 2006. Later, he was one of the founders of a new party, TOP 09, of which he was vice-president after its founding in 2009 and president from 2015 to 2017. He was also Minister of Finance twice, in the governments of Mirko Tobolanek and Petr Necas (both ODS). Kalousek, now 62, resigned from his parliamentary seat and decided to retire from active politics in January 2021.
