The Political Spectrum of the Government: Government of Czech Republic

The Czech Government contains of three political parties: Social Democratic Party, the Christian and Democratic Union (Czechoslovak People´s Party) and the Freedom Union - Democratic Union.

The main political parties in the Czech Republic represent a broad spectrum of opinions and policies. On the left edge of this spectrum one can find the traditional Communist Party, whereas on the right edge operates extremist nationalistic parties. Some of them are non-parliamentary. The biggest parties in the Czech Parliament are as follows:

1. ODS (Občanská Demokratická Strana): Civic Democratic Party. This is the biggest center – right party, that has been strengthened between the last two elections, and its voting rate rose from 24,5% in 2002 (58 Seats) to 35,4% in 2006 (81 Seats).

2. ČSSD (Česká Strana Sociálne Demokratická): Czech Social Democratic Party, headed by the current Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek. The ČSSD, the biggest center – left party in Czech Republic, used to be a biggest party after the 2002 elections, when it won 30.2% of the votes (70 seats). In 2006 the ČSSD maintained its popularity and even made a slight increase in it (32,3%, or 74 Seats) – due to the steep rise in the popularity of the rival Civic Democratic Party the Czech Social Democratic Party became only the second biggest party on the Parliament.

3. KSČM (Komunistická Strana Čech a Moravy): Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia. This is a strongly left-oriented, unreformed party. Its popularity suffered from massive decline between the two last elections (from 18,5%, or 41 seats, to 12,8% or 26 seats). According to the Communist Party’s leaders’ opinion, these results were heavily influenced, among other factors, by long lasting anticommunist campaigns.

4. KDU-ČSL (Krest’anská a Demokratická Unie): Christian and Democratic Union. The Christian and Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People’s Party (KDU-ČSL) is a conservative, Christian-democratic, center-right party in the Czech Republic. Its popularity suffered of strong decline between the two last elections (from 14,3%, or 22 seats, to 7,2%% or 13 seats).

5. SZ (Strana Zelených): Green Party, which promotes mostly ecological issues. The Green party joined the Czech Parliament for the first time at the last elections.

6. US-DEU (Unie Svobody - Demokratická unie): The Freedom Union-Democratic Union. This is a pro-european liberal party that doesn’t have seats in the Czech Chamber of Deputies and have 3 senators in the Senate.

To form the current government, Social Democratic Party, the Christian and Democratic Union (Czechoslovak People´s Party) and the Freedom Union - Democratic Union announced an agreement and established a coalition.