Babiš wants to count a military hospital as defense spending — following Slovakia's example

The Czech government led by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš plans to build a military medical facility on the grounds of Prague's Královské Vinohrady University Hospital and count the construction costs as part of the country's defense budget, in order to move closer to NATO's target of spending 2% of GDP on defense. Babiš publicly explained the idea back in April, citing the examples of Turkey and Slovakia.

According to the prime minister, the land for the new military facility would first be transferred to the Ministry of Defense's administration. Slovakia did exactly the same thing, when Robert Fico's government, between 2024 and 2025, included two new hospitals in its defense spending plans for 2026.

The Slovak Model

One of the clinics is being built near Bratislava, with an estimated cost of around 1.3 billion euros; construction began last December. The facility is designed as a civilian-military institution and is expected to serve mostly regular patients. The second hospital is being built in Prešov, based on the existing J. A. Reiman University Hospital, which came under the control of Slovakia's Ministry of Defense in 2024.

According to Tomáš Valášek, Slovakia's former ambassador to NATO, without counting these two hospitals, Slovakia's defense spending in 2026 would amount to just 1.74% of GDP instead of the alliance's required two percent. Speaking to the Financial Times, Valášek noted that these projects were never originally part of defense planning, and NATO never asked Slovakia to build them — the country already has a functioning military hospital in Ružomberok.

A Czech Copy — and Criticism

Slovak political analyst Grigorij Mesežnikov believes Babiš is directly following Robert Fico's playbook. "Babiš is a very impressionable man — he watches closely what's happening in Slovakia, and he's drawn to what Fico is doing," Mesežnikov said. Both politicians, he explained, use a similar trick: folding dual-purpose projects into the defense budget so they can address social needs while formally meeting NATO commitments — and then use that for political gain.

Opposition figures in both countries call this approach statistical manipulation. Former Slovak Defense Minister Jaroslav Naď told the Financial Times that the infrastructure projects under Fico's government "have very little — or nothing at all — to do with actual defense." Former Czech Defense Minister Jana Černochová (ODS) was even blunter: "The government is clearly trying to artificially inflate defense spending with projects the army doesn't actually need."

The current Czech Defense Minister, Jaroslav Zuna (SPD), has previously said that spending on a military hospital could count as defense spending, provided the funding comes from the defense ministry's budget and the facility is part of the military medical system.

Source: novinky.cz