Andrej Babiš

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Sunday announced he wanted to form a new EU parliament alliance, together with Austria's far-right party and the Czech centrist group of ex-premier Andrej Babis.

In other news, Poland denies any involvement in last years sabotage of Russia's Nord Stream gas pipelines; the Ukrainian PoWs that Russia sent to Hungary are causing tensions; and a new amendment means former Czech prime minister Andrej Babis must sell off his media assets.

And the confusion doesn't stop there. As war, inflation and migration helps to expand competition on the far reaches of the political spectrum, the more established radical-right players are circling the wagons. On Wednesday, the SPD - Czechia's only far-right parliamentary party - signed a memorandum of cooperation with the non-parliamentary Trikolora.

Orban reiterated his government's narrative that Hungary was in chaos before he took over in 2010. He paid a backhanded tribute to George Soros, saying that if the Hungarian-born US billionaire "had not launched his migration program, we would never have made it into the headlines".

Petr Pavel, a former chairman of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) military committee, has become the new president of the Czech Republic on Saturday, Al Jazeera reported.

Retired NATO general Petr Pavel defeated a billionaire former prime minister in an election run-off on Saturday to become the fourth president of the Czech Republic.

Pavel, a former paratrooper, won 58.3 percent of votes while Andrej Babis scored 41.7 percent, according to final results published by the Czech Statistical Office.

A referendum will take place in Slovakia on Saturday, as citizens vote on a constitutional change that would make it possible to shorten parliament's term through a referendum or by a majority vote in the parliament. The referendum, the first in seven years, was initiated by the opposition Smer party back in 2021.

Out of power but still very much in the public eye, former prime minister Andrej Babis will be in Prague's Municipal Court on Monday for the beginning of his eagerly anticipated fraud trial.

Right-winger Petr Fiala was named the Czech Republic's new prime minister on Nov. 28 in an unusual ceremony, with wheelchair-bound President Milos Zeman speaking from behind a plastic barrier because he has COVID-19.

The president is still to appoint the other 17 ministerial nominees. That's meant to be a formality, but Zeman is a master of turning such formalities into political drama.

The president has told the country that he plans to object to one ministerial nomination. While he didn't name anybody, the proposal of Jan Lipavsky as foreign minister is widely assumed to be the target.