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Since 2004, Europeanisation has had no serious impact on the content and logic of Czech party politics. Although we can find some (relatively few) reactions to European issues in party manifestoes, the format of partisan competition has remained intact (Hloušek/Pšeja 2009: 534; Hloušek/Kopeček 2008; Hloušek/ Kaniok 2014).

Ongoing research (Havlík/Havlík 2014) on the Europeanisation of Czech political parties indicates that the salience of European issues in party platforms has been relatively low for a long time – only 5.28% of all sentences concern the EU. The 2013 elections experienced no notable growth in the Europeanisation of party platforms (salience 6.61%). If the issue of economic crisis was mentioned, it occurred in a national, rather than European context. In the following analysis of the effects of the economic crisis, it is thus necessary to differentiate between the changes caused directly by European issues (Greek crisis, euro instability), and those that were merely secondary effects of the crisis that influenced Czech macroeconomic indicators (inflation, unemployment, economic growth).

The economic crisis had a visible effect on the party system of the CR, however indirect. It cannot be said that the weakening of established parties and the formation of new ones which took place between 2010 and 2013 was a direct effect of European issues as such. In other words, this was not the result of the emergence of a European issues cleavage – i.e. a nationalism-universalism cleavage. TOP 09 and Public Affairs, new parties that sprang up out of the protracted crisis of established parties, are rather interesting phenomena, but their formation cannot be seen as a result of the economic crisis. To a very limited extent, the case of TOP 09 relates to the topic of European integration vis-à-vis the Eurosceptic ODS. The issue of Europe was nevertheless a secondary element for the rise of TOP 09 and otherwise was in no way associated with the economic crisis.

[54] After the crisis had mostly passed, the CR had a government under the leadership of the conservative Prime Minister Petr Nečas (ODS), resulting from the 2010 elections. The government was composed of three parties – ODS (conservative, Eurosceptic), TOP 09 (conservative, euro-optimistic) and Public Affairs (protest). The first major chance for conflict arose over the Fiscal Pact, which Prime Minister Nečas, together with British Prime Minister David Cameron, refused to sign. This step by Nečas somewhat divided his governmental coalition, as the other parties in the government were rather supportive. However, Nečas had the support of President Klaus, who thanked Nečas for refusing and who acted as a clever opinion maker during the whole affair (Lidovky.cz 2012). “For us it is totally unacceptable. The idea of shifting it to the Brussels technocrats, bureaucrats” (Česká televize 2012). The government weathered this crisis, but it demonstrated that the topic of Europe could act as a divisive factor on the Czech political scene. This was not the first time. While the issue of Europe in the context of Czech partisan competition has not been a cleavage for a long time, there exist particular situations in which the issue played an important role. The debate on Lisbon Treaty accession was certainly one of the reasons for the fall of the Mirek Topolánek (ODS) government in 2009. Europeanizing efforts were interpreted as “following Brussels’ orders” and the entire debate was presented in an “us and them” tone. The Fiscal Pact was judged as unacceptable in the CR from the very start, as it was understood and explained as an attempt by Brussels to limit Czech sovereignty in deciding on its own budget.

The right-wing government of Petr Nečas reacted to the economic downturn with budget cuts and austerity. The problem, however, was the method selected for cutting back. The government, whose strongest party (ODS) was known for its sympathy for low taxes and its resistance to tax hikes, introduced a tax increase on high-income segments of the population in 2012 (Deník Referendum 2012). The deep cuts and the raising of taxes, for which the coalition parties (especially ODS) had to pay a steep political price, can be understood as one of the effects of the economic crisis, as Vít Hloušek and Petr Kaniok note:

However, during a period of economic crisis, the government's austerity policy proved to be a double-edged sword. (…) The right-wing coalition not only made some unpopular restrictions in many policy areas, including welfare expenditure, but also increased indirect taxes (including VAT), contrary to both parties’ pre-electoral declarations (Hloušek/Kaniok 2014).

The elections in 2013 thus only confirmed the trend that had started some years before. The party that gave the CR three Prime Ministers and had always won at least 20% of the votes (even exceeding 35% in 2006) received less than 8% in 2013, and thereby just barely surpassed the electoral threshold of 5%. The economic crisis was not the only factor contributing to the collapse of ODS, [55] but the clumsy reaction of the governing elites to the crisis undoubtedly added to the party's marginalisation. For a party that instituted a ‘flat tax’ during its 2006-2009 term for all income segments of the population, even moderately progressive taxation was seen as a departure from right-wing policy, and as a strange and thoroughly ‘leftist’ step. The economic crisis and the fall of the main conservative party, however, did not imply the strengthening of its longtime rivals. Support for the opposition Social Democrats (ČSSD) also dropped in 2013, though they managed to limp to victory with a total of 20.45% of the vote. This was the worst result for ČSSD since 1992. Both ‘main’ parties competing for power (ODS and ČSSD), who combined won over two-thirds of the overall vote in 2006 (80% of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies), saw their combined support drop significantly in 2010 to only 42% and, in 2013, to paltry 28%.

Voters in the 2013 election turned to "new" solutions, among which were the newly formed parties ANO 2011 and the Dawn of Direct Democracy (Úsvit přímé demokracie). Both were the products of processes that had been unfolding for some years in the CR. These include a long-term lack of trust in the established elites and the issue of unsuccessful campaigns against corruption, as well as a climate of economic crisis and recession (Havlík 2015). Regarding the vote count, ANO is particularly interesting: it is led by multi-billionaire Andrej Babiš, who identified himself as a non-politician that wanted to run the country like a business. This is outlined by Kopeček (2016a: 744), who explains the origin of ANO and its specificity:

The leader’s appeal aimed at the removal of politicians and in fact the elimination of politics as such. The effect of this appeal was to significantly strengthen the repercussions of the centre-right government’s scandalous fall in the summer of 2013, pushing the established party system towards collapse.

It is pointless to address the rise of this populist party in the context of Europeanisation, as the party itself never discusses Europe. ANO has never substantively addressed the topic of Europe, nor does it have a deeply developed program. The rise of this party, however, is one of the many by-products of the economic crisis and as such is interesting in the debate on transformations in the Czech party system. As Vlastimil Havlík (2015: 212) points out, “the worsening economic situation in the Czech Republic served as another opportunity for criticism of the established political parties and governments.” In other words, the emergence of ANO 2011 occurred as a response to the established elite, while the ongoing crisis served as a convenient cudgel for criticizing the economic steps of the government. ANO 2011 and ODS did not compete over European issues in the 2013 elections. The economic crisis and austerity, however, greatly influenced voters' attitudes, determining the course of the campaign as well as the election results. The Czech system after the 2013 elections [56] thus has seen extensive reshaping of the party landscape and growing fragmentation of the party system overall (Havlík et al. 2014). The system currently is not in a condition in which the current socio-economic, i.e. left-right, cleavage should be discounted, but experts should continue to give extra attention to current unfolding changes (Hloušek/Kaniok 2014: 11-12).