Thursday

28th Mar 2024

Czech people's party lands in hot water over anti-immigration line

  • “We don’t want Europe full of inadaptable immigrants who burn cars on the city outskirts" said the sentence which was then removed (Photo: wfbakker2)

The Czech Christian Democrats’ campaign for the EU elections got off to a rocky start earlier this month after it included a controversial line about immigration in its party programme.

The centre-right party (KDU-CSL), pro-Europeans and part of the governing coalition, presented its programme for the elections with a traditional agenda: united Europe, social-market economy, care for families.

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Get the EU news that really matters

Instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

But it was the very last sentence of the short manifesto that brought the party into the spotlight.

It focused on immigration, a hot potato theme that features in the domestic campaigns of many of the member states ahead of the May EU vote.

“We don’t want Europe full of inadaptable immigrants who burn cars on the city outskirts, deal drugs and bring radical Islamism with them,” the programme read.

The line made it to Facebook where most users of the social network thought it came from the far-right anti-immigrant Usvit (the Dawn) party.

When it became clear the sentence was part of the Christians democrats’ programme, mainstream media took up the issue.

When confronted with the text, Pavel Svoboda, heading the euro-deputy list for the KDU-CSL, said it had been “taken out of context”.

However, there was no other context except that lone sentence. In addition, there is no domestic debate on radical Islamism. There are very few Muslims in the Czech Republic - the 10-million strong country has just one mosque.

The party then explained that its European programme was “mistakenly published” on its website in its “working version”. In the end, the party said the topic was formulated in a very “unlucky way” and the sentence was deleted from the programme.

Svoboda maintains the KDU-CSL wanted to present its migration strategy in a “constructive and broader European” context but it was all “misunderstood”.

He denied that the rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the Czech Republic – from which Usvit is largely benefitting – played a role in how the vexed sentenced was formulated.

Around the same time as the controversy was playing out, a major polling agency unveiled a survey showing that the majority of Czechs thinks there are “too many” foreigners in the country.

This is despite the fact that the Czech Republic is one of the most ethnically homogenous states in Europe with fewer than 4 percent of the population being non-Czechs.

Record number of Roma running in Czech EU election

Despite rising animosity towards the country's minority Roma population – or perhaps precisely because of it – there is now a record number of Roma running in the Czech EU elections.

Prominent Czech MEP pushed aside for party-fixer

Czech MEP Libor Roucek has just learnt a hard lesson about the true distance between Brussels and Prague, finding himself so far down his party's list that he is unlikely to return to the European Parliament.

Putin's ally in Prague Castle

Czech President Milos Zeman is unabashedly pro-Russian, embarassing the government which is following the general EU line on Russia.

Opinion

Why UK-EU defence and security deal may be difficult

Rather than assuming a pro-European Labour government in London will automatically open doors in Brussels, the Labour party needs to consider what it may be able to offer to incentivise EU leaders to factor the UK into their defence thinking.

Latest News

  1. Kenyan traders react angrily to proposed EU clothes ban
  2. Lawyer suing Frontex takes aim at 'antagonistic' judges
  3. Orban's Fidesz faces low-polling jitters ahead of EU election
  4. German bank freezes account of Jewish peace group
  5. EU Modernisation Fund: an open door for fossil gas in Romania
  6. 'Swiftly dial back' interest rates, ECB told
  7. Moscow's terror attack, security and Gaza
  8. Why UK-EU defence and security deal may be difficult

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of MinistersJoin the Nordic Food Systems Takeover at COP28
  2. Nordic Council of MinistersHow women and men are affected differently by climate policy
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersArtist Jessie Kleemann at Nordic pavilion during UN climate summit COP28
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCOP28: Gathering Nordic and global experts to put food and health on the agenda
  5. Friedrich Naumann FoundationPoems of Liberty – Call for Submission “Human Rights in Inhume War”: 250€ honorary fee for selected poems
  6. World BankWorld Bank report: How to create a future where the rewards of technology benefit all levels of society?

Join EUobserver

EU news that matters

Join us