The leaders of ANO, Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) and the Motorists, who will likely form the new coalition government, yesterday signed a proposal to freeze the salaries of constitutional officials at their current level from next year. SPD leader Tomio Okamura said they will submit it to the Chamber of Deputies today.
Okamura, who is also the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, told journalists that the salaries of politicians should be frozen for five years.
According to the planned budget, the salaries of parliament and cabinet members and the president should increase by 5% next year.
Okamura told CTK that the proposal is only about politicians’ salaries. He insisted there was no time to discuss the proposal.
“We want the Senate, where Fiala’s government coalition has a majority, to hold a session immediately. Now the true face of the Fiala government will be revealed,” he said, referring to the outgoing Prime Minister and Civic Democrats (ODS) leader Petr Fiala.
The Senate sessions are scheduled for 26 November and 17 December.
He said the bill should be discussed in the lower house in an accelerated mode so that it could be passed in the first round, which the outgoing coalition may prevent. “We urgently need the cooperation of the parties in Fiala’s governing coalition,” he added.
Okamura said he also expected President Petr Pavel to deal with the bill quickly.
The proposal will be submitted to the government, which has 30 days to consider it.
Outgoing Deputy Prime Minister Marian Jurecka (KDU-CSL) told a press conference after a meeting of the outgoing cabinet that he does not want the proposal to freeze the salaries of politicians to be discussed in an accelerated mode.
Jurecka said he was prepared to present a change to the bill in the second round, under which money would not be paid to those politicians who accumulate multiple political offices. “If the ANO movement wants to do that, okay, they have a majority. Then I call on them to really look at this problem, which is to the detriment of the citizens,” he said.
Outgoing Industry andTrade Minister Lukas Vlcek (STAN) also said it was necessary to look at the problem comprehensively, including in terms of rewards for other functions.
The draft state budget, which is currently being discussed by the lower house budget committee, envisages that the salaries of judges and prosecutors will increase by more than 13% next year, while the salaries of top politicians will increase by about 5%. The new calculation of salaries of constitutional officials is based on a law pushed through by the ruling coalition in March, overriding President Pavel’s veto.
The new coalition’s proposal does not concern the salaries of judges and prosecutors, as confirmed to CTK by ANO vice-chair Alena Schillerova.
A rank-and-file MP should receive a basic monthly salary of CZK 115,000 in 2026, an increase of CZK 5,500 from this year. A chair of a lower or upper house committee should get CZK 162,000 a month. The basic monthly salary of a minister should be CZK 219,300, and of the prime minister, lower or upper house speaker CZK 309,000, nearly CZK 15,000 more than now. The president should get CZK 383,000 a month, up from CZK 365,000 this year.
Politicians will also see a 5% increase in their financial compensation for expenses such as representation or transport.
Before the elections, ANO declared that it wanted to freeze politicians’ salaries before the end of the year. If the MPs do not pass the relevant amendments by 1 January, the freeze would not come until 2027.
