Do we like Andrej Babiš?
Our score: 4 out of 10. Real worries about the company he governs with and his conflicts of interest, set against a thin record of good and a few positions we'd cheer.
Babiš was born in Bratislava in 1954, studied foreign trade, and in 1993 founded Agrofert, which grew into the country's biggest agricultural, food and chemical holding. He turned that fortune into politics, launching ANO in 2011 and winning the 2017 election to become prime minister. He's now back for a second go, sworn in on 9 December 2025 after ANO won about 34.7 per cent of the vote.
The past follows him. Records name him as a communist-era secret police collaborator under the code name “Bureš”; he denies it. In 2024 Slovakia's interior ministry settled with him, acknowledging he'd been registered illegally, while he maintained he never knowingly cooperated. Historians quoted at the time called the deal highly unusual, and the then prime minister called it a political deal.
The big stoush is the Stork's Nest case: prosecutors accused him of fraud over a roughly €2 million EU subsidy for a conference centre meant for small firms. A Prague court acquitted him and his former aide in January 2023, with the judge saying no evidence showed he owned the complex. In March 2026, though, lawmakers rejected a motion to lift his immunity in an EU-subsidy fraud case, which has kept it frozen. He says the court confirmed what he'd said all along.
On the harm test, it's mixed. In 2019 he said same-sex couples should have the same marriage rights, though he noted not everyone in ANO agrees. But he declined to sign an EU letter opposing Hungary's anti-LGBTQ+ law, and he governs with the SPD, which opposes same-sex marriage, and the Motorists, whose manifesto rejects “LGBT propaganda in public spaces”. He also sits with Orbán in the Patriots alliance. We found nothing of his own against trans people.
On climate and Europe he is combative. In September he was courting Bulgaria's support to postpone the EU's ETS 2 carbon scheme, and he has urged Europe to “finally try to end this war” in Ukraine, pointing to Trump's direct talks with Putin. Critics read that as softening on Russia; supporters read it as pragmatism. Where you land depends on which.
The media fight is the one to watch. In June his cabinet approved moving public TV and radio funding from licence fees to the state budget, and thousands rallied outside Czech Television; protesters say it hands the coalition a lever on the media. Babiš says the media need to save money. Separately, a Prague court in 2019 found he must apologise to a protester for claiming demonstrators were paid, and he said he'd appeal.