Czechoslovakia makes a slightly right turn

Elections in Czechoslovakia saw the population go right, by a hair:

The main Czech conservative party has won the country's parliamentary elections held on Friday and Saturday (2-3 June) but it remains unlikely that it will set up a majority government coalition.

The Civic Democratic Party (ODS) tops the election results table with 35.4 percent of the votes, followed by the former ruling party – social democrats – (32.3%), the communists (12.8%), the christian democrats (7.2%) and the greens (6.3%), according to press reports.

Around 64.5 percent of Czech voters turned out to cast their ballot.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out against the socialism still dominating Europe:

The narrowly winning conservatives have promised to cut taxes and to reform the health care and pension systems – the main policy-related topics that dominated the campaign.

Czech policy on Europe did not feature in the pre-election debate, despite strong differences between the two leading parties.

The conservatives follow a eurosceptic tradition established by their founder Vaclav Klaus and are opposed to any attempts to revive the EU constitution.

The party's members represented in the European Parliament are considering leaving the European People's Party, which they see as federalist and joining the British conservatives in a possible new parliamentary group instead.

But according to observers, the Czech ODS is likely to be less confrontational when in government than during its opposition period.