The policy statement of the emerging Czech government mainly reflects the priorities of the ANO movement, political analysts have told CTK, though coalition partners the Motorists and Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) have managed to get some of their pre-election promises incorporated in it.
The draft policy statement was sent by the new coalition to President Petr Pavel on Friday. The three parties are to publish the full programme and sign the coalition pact today.
According to the analysts addressed by CTK, there are no major surprises in the government’s draft programme.
“The biggest surprise is that there are no surprises in it,” said Milan Skolnik of the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague. “But it shows the dominance of the ANO movement.”
He said that the Motorists’ voters will be satisfied with the rejection of the ban on the sale and production of cars with combustion engines by 2035, and SPD voters will be satisfied with the preparation of a law on a national referendum.
Lukas Vomlela from the Silesian University in Opava also confirms this, saying the statement mainly copies the most important themes of the election campaign, such as the promise of cheaper energy, ensuring affordable housing, capping the retirement age at 65 and strengthening the state’s internal security.
“The new government wants to move towards balanced budgets, yet it wants to do so only at the end of its four-year term of office, and in the first few years it wants to focus primarily on investments,” he noted.
Skolnik said that the close matching of the statement to ANO’s priorities indicates how important the policy statement is to the party.
“Perhaps this redeems the personnel issues of the new government. The Motorists will get four ministries, and SPD three, along with the seat of the lower house speaker, which is quite generous of ANO. The smaller coalition parties will probably be primarily satisfied with the number of seats,” Skolnik said, referring to ANO’s clear and comfortable victory in the October parliamentary elections, compared to SPD and the Motorists, which each received less than 8% of the vote.
Vomlela said the policy statement also contains rather controversial points, including the abolition of the crime of unauthorised activities on behalf of a foreign power. “Another is the plan to increase control over non-profit organisations, especially those that carry out political activities and are financed from abroad,” he added.
XTB analyst Pavel Peterka pointed to the adjustment of rhetoric on the public deficit, where the parties of the emerging government have promised to keep it below 3 percent of GDP. “In the current situation, we are slightly above 2 percent. So the draft policy statement leaves room for the debt rate to rise. I am not surprised given the frequency and financial intensity of the promises ranging from increasing pension spending, public sector pay rises, investment, support for young families and many others. This increases the risk of undermining the country’s fiscal stability in the longer term,” Peterka said.
