Prague Pirates leader Nislerová: I want to become mayor and focus on housing and forests instead of the roundabout on the square

Tereza Nislerová, the Pirate Party's candidate for the top job at Prague City Hall in the upcoming municipal elections, says she doesn't see her lack of experience in national-level politics as a drawback — nor does she consider her candidacy a mere front for the current Prague mayor, Zdeněk Hřib, who occupies only tenth place on the party list.

An economist by training and a district councillor in Prague 4, Nislerová also works as a manager at the Czech branch of Orlen Unipetrol. She says she brings experience from working at the European Commission and managing teams in the private sector — a background she considers more substantial than the one Hřib had when he first became mayor with no political experience whatsoever.

Nislerová pushed back against claims from political rivals that she is merely a "facade" for Hřib. "I will lead the coalition talks together with Adam Zábranský, and Hřib will not be part of the negotiating team," she said. According to her, Hřib was included on the candidate list purely to make use of his experience, not to lead.

If elected, Nislerová would like to oversee housing at City Hall — in her view, the most pressing problem facing Praguers. The Pirates, who have been at the helm of Prague for eight years now, are promising to speed up the construction of municipal housing and tighten regulation of Airbnb, which the party estimates has already swallowed up at least 20,000 flats in the capital — the equivalent of four years' worth of new construction.

According to international rankings, Prague ranks third among Europe's most expensive cities in terms of housing costs, the politician noted. She acknowledged that earlier promises to build tens of thousands of municipal and private flats were not fully delivered, but explained this by the fact that in the current coalition the Pirates were not formally responsible for housing policy — the portfolio was split among three different councillors with separate mandates.

On transport, Nislerová said she would not abandon the parking reform the party failed to complete during the previous term. She pointed out that around 300,000 cars drive into Prague every day from the Central Bohemian Region, and proposed tripling the parking fee for a family's second car, while raising the price of a resident parking permit for the first car from the current 1,200 crowns a year to between 3,600 and 4,000 crowns.

As a source of inspiration, the politician cited Paris, where a small forest of roughly 300 trees was planted at Place de Catalogne on the site of a former traffic roundabout. "Turning a roundabout into a forest — I think that's a great idea," Nislerová said, adding that she would like to bring swimming back to the Vltava for Praguers, modelled on the Seine in Paris, where free wooden beaches with showers and changing rooms have been set up.

She named Prague Sobě and STAN as the most likely coalition partners after the election, noting she has already held preliminary talks with their leaders. Cooperation with the ANO movement, she said, will be ruled out entirely from the Prague Pirates' election strategy in the coming weeks, since they consider ANO an undemocratic party.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz