On Wednesday, 21 October 2026, Czech MEP Kateřina Konečná (Stačilo!), until now non-attached, said on X that she had joined the Patriots for Europe group. iROZHLAS reported from Strasbourg/Brussels at 10:18. Joining a group is not a re-election of the European Parliament’s president. It is not a plenary vote on the EP leadership.

The group had 85 MEPs; with Konečná, 86, the third force in the EP, iROZHLAS writes. Other reports stop at 85. The two figures are not mixed. The Parliament’s own MEP list already places her with Patriots for Europe, beside the Czech party KSČM. A listed affiliation is not a ballot.

Konečná says that after the June 2024 elections there was hope of a conservative-left group; at mid-mandate, it has not been formed. Two and a half years non-attached, hundreds of her proposals “fell under the table”, she writes. Non-attached members have fewer levers in the EP. Until 2024 she sat with the Left (GUE/NGL). Her reasons — the Green Deal, migration — are a statement, not a group vote.

She says she has most often voted with the Patriots, but that she will not vote for everything the group proposes. That promise is not group discipline. For Stačilo! there is still Ondřej Dostál in the EP, still non-attached. Her joining is not his.

Among Czechs, the Patriots already include seven from ANO, the governing party, and Antonín Staněk (Přísaha). Konečná is not an ANO MEP. The group remains third; one seat does not put it over the first two.

The X post is hers, not a statement from the EP presidency. iROZHLAS does not say the group changed its chairs. Mid-mandate 2024–2029 is not a new Czech election.

Image: the European Parliament hemicycle, Strasbourg, 5 February 2014, Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The hemicycle in 2014, not Wednesday’s announcement.

Sources consulted: Czech MEP Konečná joined the Patriots for Europe group — iROZHLAS; Konečná joined the Patriots for Europe group — iDNES.