Czechs vote as frontrunner Babis pledges to raise wages

Czechs began voting on Friday in an election likely to oust their centre-right government, with polls favouring populist billionaire Andrej Babis to return to power on pledges to raise wages and lift growth while reducing aid for Ukraine.

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The change would boost Europe's populist anti-immigration camp and could complicate consensus on climate policies.

Czechs endured inflation surges after the global pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and have had a slow recovery from one of Europe's worst drops in real incomes.

That has hurt the popularity of Prime Minister Petr Fiala's Spolu coalition and its liberal government allies, who focused on lowering the budget deficit.

Both candidates made last-ditch appeals to voters on Friday, with Babis handing out doughnuts in the industrial city of Ostrava and telling his voters not to feel like anything was won yet.

Babis, whose ANO party held double-digit leads in most opinion polls, is an ally of Hungary's Viktor Orban in the Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament, and has taken an ambivalent line on aid to Ukraine a departure from Fiala's government, which has strongly supported Kyiv since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.