Minister Macinka: I Hope the Ankara Summit Was Pavel's Last

The leader of the Motorists party and Czech Environment Minister Petr Macinka has said that relations between the ruling coalition and President Petr Pavel remain tense, adding that he hopes the recent NATO summit in Ankara was the last such event the head of state will attend before his presidential term ends.

According to Macinka, it is not the Motorists who are behind the escalation in relations, but the president himself, whose ties with Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and the SPD party have long been considered strained. At the same time, the minister noted that among all three parties in the ruling coalition, the Motorists are relatively closest to Pavel's position on certain issues, particularly in foreign and defence policy — though they firmly reject his views on scrapping the Czech koruna, giving up the national veto, or his support for non-governmental organisations and "green" initiatives.

Macinka accused the president of using foreign policy for the purposes of his election campaign instead of coordinating his actions with the government and the Foreign Ministry, as is customary between other constitutional bodies. He said that he had recently received a letter from the president and was currently preparing a response, the contents of which he declined to disclose. Earlier this week, the minister had already published one of the president's text messages, saying he wanted to prove that Pavel had publicly lied.

Regarding the head of state's participation in the upcoming UN General Assembly session in New York this September, Macinka confirmed that, under the government's decision, President Pavel will still lead the Czech delegation to the event.

Speaking about the next NATO summit, which may be held in Tirana, the minister suggested that by then Pavel would be deep into an active election campaign, and voiced concern that he might try to use that summit for political purposes too — just as, in his view, had already happened in Ankara. He added that the next NATO summit will likely not take place in 2026, but only two years from now, and expressed hope that by that time the country would be represented on the international stage by a different president.

Macinka also commented on the trip to Ankara itself, where he had previously claimed that Pavel would not attend the summit under any circumstances and would not be present at the dinner or official talks. In the end, the president took part in all these events, including occupying a seat previously reserved for a Motorists representative. The minister explained this by saying that the decision to include Pavel in the delegation had been made at the request of the Constitutional Court, whose ruling, he said, must be respected regardless of any personal disagreement with it.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz