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Czechia will not cancel its ammunition initiative for Ukraine and will continue to coordinate the project, Prime Minister Andrej Babiš said after talks among leaders of the so-called 'coalition of the willing' in Paris on Tuesday.

Babiš said the decision was taken in agreement with coalition partners and stressed that the initiative will continue only if it is financed by other countries, with no money coming from Czech taxpayers.

The initiative was first proposed by former Czech prime minister Petr Fiala in 2023, with the first deliveries reaching Ukraine in the summer of 2024. Under the scheme, Czechia helps arrange supplies of large-calibre ammunition for Ukraine, drawing on the expertise of Czech companies.

The Czech state budget ended last year with a deficit of CZK 290.7 billion, well above the planned 241 billion, Finance Minister Alena Schillerová said on Tuesday.

The shortfall was the fourth-largest since the country’s founding, though still lower than deficits recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2024, the deficit totalled CZK 271.4 billion.

Schillerová said the higher deficit was mainly due to increased spending on renewable energy, lower-than-expected revenue from emission permits, and higher costs in regional education.

The deficit deepened sharply in December, rising by CZK 58.3 billion, an unusually large year-end increase.

Czechia spent CZK 171.1 billion on defence last year, meeting its legal target of allocating at least two percent of GDP to military spending, Finance Minister Alena Schillerová announced on Tuesday.

Defence spending reached 2.02 percent of GDP, fulfilling both a domestic requirement and a key NATO benchmark. The two-percent goal had been pledged by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and was also planned by the previous government.

NATO member states agreed last year to aim for higher defence spending by 2035, a target that Babiš has previously described as unrealistic.

President Petr Pavel will attend a meeting of the Czech State Security Council on Wednesday, the Presidential Office has announced.

The council will meet for the first time in its new composition, and one of the key topics on the agenda will be the future of the Czech ammunition initiative. Under the scheme, Czechia helps coordinate supplies of large-calibre ammunition for Ukraine.

Prime Minister Andrej Babiš of the ANO party sharply criticised the initiative ahead of last year’s elections and promised to cancel it. Toward the end of the year, however, he said the project was sound in principle, adding that the main question was whether it had operated without corruption.