Three center-right parties are expected to join forces in the Czech Republic after a late-May election left no clear winner.

Leftist Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD) garnered 22.08 percent of the vote, doing significantly worse than pre-election predictions of 30 percent. âSSD leader Ji½í Paroubek resigned soon after the results were announced.

The Civic Democrats (ODS), with 20.2 percent, soon began coalition talks with Tradition Responsibility Prosperity 09 (TOP09) and centrist Public Affairs (VV). The latter two parties contested their first elections, receiving 16.7 and 10.9 percent of the vote, respectively.

As WBJ  went to press the talks were underway and it was unclear who would become prime minister.

The elections brought several new parties and politicians into the arena, said Piotr Maciej Kaczyński of the Centre for European Policy Studies, a Brussels-based think tank. “On one hand, the emerging coalition will have a stable majority. On the other hand the future, especially of the VV party, is unknown.”

Mr Kaczyński noted that the Czech political spectrum is likely to stabilize in the short term, although it is hard to predict what will happen in the long-term.

The country’s currency and bonds strengthened after the election result was announced, and analysts hope that the formation of a coalition will end a year of political instability. Mr Kaczyński said that like all EU states, the Czech Republic needs to bring its deficit figures to a controllable level and to manage its public debt in order to prevent a crisis like that which has befallen Greece’s economy.

ODS leader Petr Neãas, for one, is optimistic the election result will help keep this from happening. He said, “This is great news that will allow the Czech Republic to avoid a repeat of the Greek scenario.”