President Petr Pavel has declared Friday, 7 June and Saturday, 8 June as the dates of this year’s European Parliament elections in the Czech Republic, the Presidential Office communications department announced today.
It was up to Pavel to officially declare the election, but he was bound by agreements on the date of the election at the European level, and by Czech electoral law determining the choice of election date.
The decision must be co-signed by Prime Minister Petr Fiala. The elections will be officially declared when the document is published in the Law Digest. The election campaign will also start on that day, and parties must register with the supervisory authority and set up an election account within five days.
Pavel had to declare the election date no later than 90 days before the elections were due to take place, which is by 9 March.
Voters in EU countries will choose new MEPs between 6 and 9 June. This is two weeks later than the previous EU elections in 2019. Residents of the bloc’s 27 countries will go to the polls for the first time since the United Kingdom left the EU.
Citizens will elect 720 members of parliament, 15 more than in the outgoing period. The increase in the number of seats is in response to demographic changes in the EU, though the Czech Republic’s allocation of MEPs will not change from the current 21.
MEP Alexandr Vondra (ODS) is the leader of the candidate list for the Spolu coalition (ODS, Christian Democrats, TOP 09). The Pirates, with MEP Marcel Kolaja as number one candidate, will run independently, as will the Mayors and Independents (STAN), with economist and former presidential candidate Danuse Nerudova and former STAN MEP Jan Farsky topping its list of candidates.
ANO’s leader in the EU election is Klara Dostalova, former minister for regional development and current deputy speaker of the lower house. The leader of the Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) list is former MEP Petr Mach.
ANO won the 2019 elections, taking six of the 21 Czech seats, followed by ODS with four, Pirates and STAN/TOP 09 with three each, SPD and KDU-CSL with two seats each, and the Communists with one.
