Jindřich Rajchl is a Czech politician, lawyer, businessman, and former football official who became a household name across Europe during the COVID pandemic when he filed several lawsuits against the Czech government. In 2022, he founded the PRO (Law, Respect, Expertise) party with the stated mission to make energy cheaper, restore confidence in the law, and defend human freedoms threatened under the COVID pandemic.
For our readers who may not be familiar with you, can you introduce yourself and tell us what compelled you to get into politics?
Yes, put quite simply, I was compelled to become involved in politics by what went on during the COVID-19 pandemic. I felt the need to protest against all of the draconian measures that were put in place, namely the removal of rights and liberties from ordinary people based on false premises I believe were made up and motivated by panic created quite artificially.
At one point, there was a demonstration, a rally here in the Czech Republic, against the COVID measures, at which I was invited to speak. And the speech I gave at the rally ended up going viral. It was seen by over 750,000 people in the Czech Republic. So with that, I became increasingly involved in the political sphere, so much so that I decided basically to start my own party … Not with the ambition of becoming a sole member of parliament or the European Parliament, however, but because I wanted to change things in a significant way—not just cosmetic changes, but real systematic changes. And so, in order to do this you need to start with your own party and convince the people that you have the program and the goals that are beneficial for the people and for the country.
And you actually gave up your successful career in business to get into politics, didn’t you?
Yes, it’s true. I’m still practicing law, however, since there is no shortage of legal cases that are happening right now related to COVID-19, Ukraine, and other crucial issues. So, since I’m a specialist in criminal law, I’m trying to defend people who are prosecuted by the state, in many cases just because they are presenting different opinions than the official, let’s say stance of the Czech government. So yes, we are back in the 1980s right now here in the Czech Republic, where there is only one truth, one line, one official line, and everyone who is against it is labeled as ‘pro-Russian,’ ‘anti-vaxxer,’ ‘disinformation spreader,’ and so on and so on, and therefore sometimes persecuted. So yes, I still practice law when it comes to cases involving these issues but mostly I’m just giving my time to politics.
You, along with your PRO party, organized a massive demonstration in Wenceslas Square in Prague some weeks ago. I believe it was the third of its kind to take place. Can you tell us what your impetus for organizing the event was?
Well, the primary motivation was this: we have elected a government that is completely off the line, off the rails. They have thrown all of their promises into the trash bin. And furthermore, at present, the Czech Republic is the worst economy in the whole of Europe. We have seen a massive drop in real income. Basically, we are becoming poorer twice as quickly as any country in Europe. Our foreign policy is determined completely by the European Union and the United States, and many of us Czechs would like to take back this country so it’s not merely a puppet state of the U.S. and EU authorities. Many of us want a government that stands first and foremost, and above all else, for Czech interests.
But as you know, this phenomenon isn’t only happening in the Czech Republic. In Slovakia, we recently saw that the people, who previously were feeling quite similar to the way we are now, chose to elect Mr. Rober Fico, a sovereigntist who is not subservient to the EU or the U.S., as their new prime minister. And without a doubt, he will definitely represent the interests of the Slovakian people in a way that the past government failed to.
Our party would like to replicate this success. Our party PRO is offering the way of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico to the people of the Czech Republic. And I believe there is a demand for this kind of political movement in the Czech Republic. People see what’s happening in Hungary and Slovakia and are taking note. I think many believe this is the right way to secure a safe and prosperous future for the Czech Republic.
You mentioned Fico’s victory weeks ago in Slovakia. More recently, we saw what appears, at least at this moment in time, to have been a defeat suffered by Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party. Do you have any thoughts on what PiS’s defeat means for Poland, the European sovereignist movement, and for Europe more broadly?
Well, I think it’s still up in the air. There’s the political party that came up third, the Third Way (Trzecia Droga), and I would say it’s quite neutral. While they may be slightly more partial to Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform (PO), I can imagine that some of their members of parliament would rather make a deal with PiS. So, yes, I think it’s not clear yet. Obviously, on paper, it looks like Donald Tusk will, with his compatriots, be able to secure a majority but I think a lot of things can happen along the way in the next one or two months.
Polish voters, many of whom withdrew their support of PiS due to its policy toward Ukraine, have sent a clear message. So as we move forward, I believe the same thing will happen to parties that are non-critically supporting Ukraine. You will see parties with this orientation losing their support base in most of the European countries because the people in Europe are opening their eyes and they see what’s happening now.
If Tusk, who is obviously very pro-Brussels, is able to establish a government in Poland, it will have quite significant implications for the region. Under the PiS government, which in my opinion had taken the correct position on many issues, the EU took many legal actions against them. So, we will have to see how a Tusk government deals with those.
It could be quite damaging to the cooperation but PRO’s position is always to cooperate closely with Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria. I believe that Herbert Kickl with FPÖ in Austria will win the next elections. So regional cooperation should be based on these countries. And this is our vision for the politicians in Europe; that the Ukrainian route is over and that the people really demand politics that will stand for the country and not just sending money and guns and everything to the regime in Ukraine.
The people have spoken, but it doesn’t seem like many of the governments are listening, especially the Czech government. You have elections in October 2025. How do you see it playing out? Do you see any open space for cooperation with Okamura’s Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) or Babiš’ ANO. There seems to be a considerable amount of ideological overlap there. What do you think?
I think our closest partner right now is ANO. I know we are a little bit more Eurosceptical and U.S.-skeptical than they are, so we just are more … let’s say, national conservatives. But regarding the economy and rebuilding the Czech economy and a more pro-national approach than the pro-European approach, I believe that we are quite close. So in my opinion, this is the party that is program-wise and even personal-wise closest to us.
We have strong support from the people who really love us, who know about us, about our thoughts and our goals. The problem is that we are blocked from mainstream media. They don’t want us to present our program to the mainstream population, to the general population. So this is the bubble that we have to burst out of, but I believe that will happen sooner or later, and that the people will be able to find out that we are not some ‘pro-fascism’ party but we are a pro-Czech party, strictly pro-Czech.
PRO is really representing what has been represented by Mr. Orbán in Hungary and by Mr. Fico in Slovakia. So there is a space in my opinion—therefore, we have founded this party to offer this route for the Czech voters, for the Czech citizens, to reach for significant results and then be part of the government, because that’s our goal. We don’t want to be just sitting in the parliament. We want to actively work in our government and make things better.
From what I observated at that protest, it’s clear that broad swaths of the Czech population are very unhappy with Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s policies. As elections draw near, do you think he will do the same thing that PiS did with Ukraine—pull back aid; start signaling against Ukraine?
I don’t think so to be honest, because they are really trying to harvest as many political points as possible from the people who are Russophobic, who really hate Russia, that they are basically just not seeing all of the things around Ukraine, around the regime. It’s not the country, it’s the regime of Mr. Zelensky, which in my opinion is a really criminal regime, a terrorist regime, a regime that is full of oligarchs.
They are just simply not seeing this because the hatred against Russia is stronger than the real view of the things that are happening right now in Ukraine. So I don’t foresee any change [those who will fully support] Ukraine until the very end. That will be a very sad end for the Ukrainian people. Once the interest goes away, and it’s going away right now because of the situation in Israel, the country will be completely forgotten and they will be just recovering from this mess for the next 30-40 years. So it’s a tragedy for the Ukrainian people and basically, our government—because of their short-term goals and short-term views—they are just pushing Ukraine to this complete disaster.
Who are Fiala’s voters? From what segment of Czech society do they come?
He’s the chairman of the most traditional political party here in Czech Republic, which is called ODS. The party was established back in the 1990s, right after the revolution. But they have completely changed their political approach. They moved completely from being a right conservative party to a middle left party. They are just completely pro-European.
The founding father of ODS, Mr. Václav Klaus, our former prime minister and president, was super Euro-skeptical. He was the last president who signed the Lisbon Treaty. And right now this ODS, the new ODS run by Mr. Fiala, is completely pro-European, completely pro-U.S., completely pro-Ukrainian. They are a globalist party, a progressivist party. They have completely moved away from the traditional approach of the ODS.
On the other hand, they have people who have been traditional voters for ODS since the 1990s, so they have been voting for the party for 20 years. And they stick with the brand, because they know the brand. And obviously they have strong media support, because the media don’t criticize the economic and legal problems that the government faces. But they are losing voters every day.
Mr. Fiala’s approval rating has dropped to 18%. This is simply terrible. No prime minister in the world can really successfully and effectively run the country when his approval rating is 18% because 8 out of 10 people don’t believe that it will work. Therefore, as a manager, if you have any experience from business, you know that if 8 out of 10 people in your company don’t believe you, you have to step down because otherwise you are simply destroying the company.
This terrible, terrible government has made a lot of mistakes that will have a lot of consequences for the future. But since the media support is still persisting, then I think they will be able to make it until the regular term of the elections in 2025. They can cause a lot of damage in the next two years, which in my opinion, is the biggest problem that we will face in the future.
I recently attended the second annual Future of Central Europe International Conference in Prague; guests came from the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Poland. As a Central European yourself, what do you think the future holds for this region? Do you think it will be able to assert itself in the coming years and sort of push back against the EU’s liberal influence? Or do you think things will kind of just remain as they are today?
I hope so, to be honest. I think we are on the right track. As I said, I think Mr. Orbán will be in power for a lot of years, hopefully. The same goes for Mr. Fico—and Mr. Kickl currently holds a very, very substantial lead in Austria. So I hope that this region can come together and really start to work on building the Middle European identity, not to accept all of these calls for being pro-Western, that we need to work with the West.
This is, in my opinion, a huge mistake, because the liberals—the Left in Europe—are completely crazy and they are destroying the continent as we know it. And I think that the Middle European region should be established and [have more belief in their powers], become much more self-confident—confident because we have all of the tools to be successful. We just need to leave the usual stance, the usual opinion that ‘we need to decide if to go either west or east.’
In my opinion there is a huge space to really build our own way, set up our own goals, and with all of this self-confidence, really follow these goals, and really build the Middle European region with all of our powers and traditions and our specific needs and goals.
Act as a bridge between the East and the West—cooperate with China, Russia, and the West but not be beholden to any of them?
Exactly. We have been a traditional bridge between East and West. And we are different. Our mentality is different from West and East. And I believe that we should really become this bridge between East and West and work closely both with the European Union and with BRICS and become the partners for East and West. So it would be a huge mistake to pick a side right now. We need to create our own region and set up our own goals and follow our own pathway to these goals.
So, let’s build the Middle European region and leave this position of selecting East or West. Middle Europe holds the future. I strongly believe that we could be a super successful region with all of the people power that we have. We have really good people. The people have a lot of qualities, a lot of experience and everything. So I think the future is here for us. We just need to follow it and not continue in selecting either to stick with the West or with the East. That would be a huge mistake for this region.
Whenever countries from Central Europe trade with Russia or China, they’re constantly browbeaten by their counterparts in the West saying, oh, ‘you’re pro-Russian’—when people like the U.S. are buying tons of material from Russia?
Well, basically, that’s the name of the game. The U.S. are labeling all of these people ‘pro-Russian’ while they are making more trades with Russia than anybody else. This is really ridiculous.
The problem is that Mr. Orbán was quite alone on this track. Everybody was anti-Russian. Everybody was scared to say that we just want to be equal partners to East and West, and we don’t want to have enemies and divide the world into friends and foes.
But with Mr. Fico, with Mr. Kickl, when there are four countries, and we can obviously add Serbia and former Yugoslavian countries, then it will be much more difficult to label all of these countries as pro-Russian.
If you are standing alone as Mr. Orbán currently does—my hat’s off to him for maintaining his approach—that’s very difficult. That’s very difficult because you’re the only one who is always under pressure. But when there are four or five, maybe six countries that will be working together on some kind of, I call it CETU, Central European Trade Union, a free zone region that will be working as the bridge between East and West, and having good trade relationships with Russia, it will be much harder to just quickly label this as pro-Russian approach.
