News

Czech President Petr Pavel has criticised the Together coalition's European Parliament election campaign, which portrays opposition party ANO as supporting Russian interests. The president wrote on social media site X that the campaign is just as unfair and dangerous as ANO leader Andrej Babiš's statements stirring up anti-Ukrainian sentiments, and that neither will improve the country's political culture or increase citizens' trust in politicians.

On Thursday the Together coalition made up of the Civic Democrats (ODS), the Christian Democrats (KDU-ČSL), and TOP 09 launched a website with a domain name that uses ANO's campaign slogan for the EP elections, which the opposition party had failed to register. The coalition seized the opportunity to register the domain name themselves and changed the slogan on the website from "Česko, pro tebe všecko" (Czechia, Everything For You) to "Rusko, pro tebe všecko" (Russia, Everything For You).

Prime Minister Petr Fiala dismissed the view that the coalition had launched a smear campaign and said the idea was to alert voters to the dangers of electing ANO to the EP.

The Together coalition made up of the Civic Democrats, the Christian Democrats, and TOP 09, has taken advantage of the fact that the opposition ANO party didn't register the domain name with its campaign slogan for the European Parliament elections, "Česko, pro tebe všecko" (Czechia, Everything For You), Prime Minister Petr Fiala told journalists on Thursday. The coalition seized the opportunity to register the domain name themselves and change the slogan on the website to "Russia, Everything For You", as well as altering the images of party leader Andrej Babiš and top candidate Klára Dostálová so that they have the Russian flag on their faces instead of the Czech flag. The prime minister said the idea was to alert voters to the dangers of electing ANO to the EP.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has upgraded this year's global economic growth forecast from 2.9 percent to 3.1 percent in the latest OECD Economic Outlook report published on Thursday. However, out of the Visegrad Group (V4) countries, the OECD predicts the slowest growth for Czechia, with GDP growth of 1.1 percent this year and 2.4 percent next year, compared to Poland (2.9 percent growth this year and 3.4 percent next year), Hungary (2.1 percent this year and 2.8 percent next year), and Slovakia (2.1 percent this year and 2.7 percent next year). This makes Czechia the only one of the V4 to fall behind the OECD average, according to the forecast.

Around 9,000 people have registered to join the Czech Armed Forces via a new online recruitment website which was put into operation last September, the Ministry of Defense reported. More than 4,000 of those candidates are applying for professional service. The Czech Army is aiming to increase the number of professional soldiers to 30,000 and have 10,000 soldiers in the active reserve by 2030.

At the beginning of this year there were 27, 800 professional soldiers in the armed forces, but this number also includes about 1,000 military police officers and about 1,500 members of the Military Intelligence Service. In order for the Czech army to reach its set goal of 30, 000 soldiers by 2030, it would need to recruit and train several hundred soldiers a year.