President warns on funding of coalition goals

President Miloš Zeman declared Sunday that he is broadly in favour of the nascent coalition’s programme goals but had some misgivings about how they could be achieved. In particular, Zeman said he wondered how funding for policy goals could be found given that moves to introduce more progressive tax for individuals and higher company and sector taxes have not been specified. The three way coalition of Social Democrats, ANO, and Christian Democrats have agreed not to introduce any tax changes this year. The head of state repeated that he has not sought to block the coalition’s creation and had given a conditional go ahead for the appointment of ANO leader Andrej Babiš as finance minister.