2009 European Parliament election in the Czech Republic  The European Parliament election of 2009 in Czech Republic was the election of the delegation from Czech Republic to the European Parliament in 2009. The Civic Democratic Party has won the election with a surprisingly strong lead against the Czech Social Democratic Party. Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia came third and the Christian and Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People's Party became the last party to enter the Parliament. Two newly founded right-wing parties, the Czech wing Libertas.cz of Declan Ganley's Libertas founded by Vladimír Železný and the Party of Free Citizens, ran in the election. Previous election was held in 2004. It was won by the Civic Democratic Party that won 30% of votes ahead of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia which received 20% of the votes. Czech Social Democratic Party of Prime Minister Vladimír Špidla was heavily defeated receiving only 9% of votes finishing fourth. Špidle resigned after the election. Civic Democrats joined European People's Party group after the election as a member of European Democrats. ODS the cooperated with British Conservative Party to establish new Eurosceptic faction within European Parliament. The 22 of Czech delegation in the European parliament are elected using open list proportional representation, in which they can give preferential votes for up to two candidates on their chosen list. Seats are allocated using the d'Hondt method, with an electoral threshold of 5% nationwide for single parties. Candidates who receive preferential votes from more than 5% of voters are moved to the top of their list, and in cases where more than one candidate receives over 5% of the preferential votes, they are ranked in order of votes received. First candidates were introduced on 9 February 2009. Jan Zahradil became electoral leader. Other candidates included Evžen Tošenovský, Oldřich Vlasák etg. Party also launched its election website on the same day. Zahradil stated that ODS will be forced to use negative campaign as reaction to strateg of its opponents. Remaining candidates were introduced on 16 March 2009. Campaign of Civic Democratic Party (ODS) was launched by electoral leader Jan Zahradil on 13 February 2009. ODS stated that it would invest 40 million CZK to the campaign. ODS started negative campaign against ČSSD as response to Social Democratic campaigns from previous years. Civic Democrats founded Blue Team to help the party with campaign.