President Pavel criticizes public debt in Czech Republic Day speech

Czech President Petr Pavel touched on the proposed state budget and the growth of public debt in his holiday speech marking the founding of the independent state. According to him, the state now borrows more than a billion crowns every day, including to pay for spending that people have come to regard as ordinary and their due.

“Debt in itself is not a failure. It can help a country weather a crisis or pay for an investment that will serve for decades,” the president said. But today, he said, we are shifting the cost of our own comfort onto our children, who are now sitting at their desks in primary and secondary schools. “That is not fair,” Pavel said.

Turning to the landscape, the head of state reproached society for not being ready for change. “The extreme droughts we experienced this year will recur with greater intensity and frequency. And we are not prepared for them,” he warned.

Pavel also criticized debates over trivial topics that, in his view, obscure what matters: the public space is being filled with content whose purpose is not to explain something but rather to cover something up. He also alluded to the debate of recent days over changing the funding of public media. “Information chaos weakens a democratic society’s ability to make decisions and defend itself. We need to build trust in established brands and authorities, not fight them or, through ill-considered changes to the law, break up the media space,” the president stressed.

Around Prague guide on the topic: Czech holiday calendar 2026: all dates and days off

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz