Final Word from Monday, August 24, 2026

The Constitutional Court never explained why it was so important for Pres. Petr Pavel to attend the Nato summit in Ankara on July 7-8. Pavel never explained it officially either, but the Court accepted the self-evidence of the urgency of his motion for a request for a preliminary injunction allowing him to attend, even though two dissenting justices raised specific doubts about the urgency of the matter. Pavel couldn't very well write in his jurisdictional complaint that he wanted to use the summit to shame the Babiš government into committing to Nato's 5% spending target, and the Court couldn't give this as its justification for the injunction either. If that was the goal, it didn't work. PM Andrej Babiš isn't budging so far on the 5% issue. From this standpoint, Pavel's considerable efforts to secure a seat for himself at the Nato summit have come to nothing, but he's not giving up. He again called late last week for keeping to the 5% target and also said that the president probably shouldn't veto a national budget unless it is "truly disastrous." If respecting the 5% target is so urgent, it's hard to see how Pavel will be able to justify signing a budget law that blatantly disregards it. [ Turkey defense ]