Andrej Babiš’s ANO opposition movement has unveiled a raft of populist pledges for the upcoming Czech elections, including reinstating kindergarten tax deductions, boosting pensions for the elderly, and restoring 75 percent fare discounts for students and seniors.
ANO also wants to halt the planned rise in social contributions for the self-employed, reintroduce spousal tax breaks, and repurchase minority stakes in the energy giant ČEZ.
Babiš, the former prime minister and leader of ANO, claims he can fund these initiatives through a combination of austerity and more efficient tax collection. “If I were prime minister, on day one, I’d fire 300 people at the Government Office. I would save money everywhere,” Babiš said on the TV program “Partie,” arguing that much of the state bureaucracy is bloated and wasteful.
He added that he would slash procurement costs and criticized ministries for overspending. “They buy unnecessary things,” he said, singling out the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Defense as the main culprits.
One of Babiš’s main ideas is to aggressively target the so-called shadow economy, which he claims contains upwards of €40 billion a year. He argues that simply by enhancing tax enforcement, the government could recover as much as €4 billion annually. “They [the current government] raised corporate taxes and ended up collecting 11 billion [Czech crowns] less,” he said.
Despite the costly promises, Babiš admitted that a balanced budget is out of reach. “We won’t promise a balanced budget — it’s not realistic. We need to invest: in healthcare, in people, in security,” he said.
Karel Havlíček, Babiš’s right-hand man in the Czech opposition, echoed this stance, telling Echo24 that achieving a balanced budget in the short term is a fantasy. “Let’s forget about reaching a balanced budget in a year or two. That was this government’s dream, and they’ve only made things worse,” Havlíček said. According to him, the Fiala government has focused on deficit reduction at the expense of economic growth.
Havlíček revealed that ANO is working on a new economic strategy with input from around 50 figures from business, academia, and science. He said the goal is to put economic revitalization in the hands of the private sector. “We’ll create an environment where employers, workers, and entrepreneurs generate profits, pay taxes, and those taxes will fund investment and pensions,” he explained, drawing comparisons to 1980s Reaganomics.
He sharply criticized the current administration for its borrowing practices. “This government is doing exactly the opposite, borrowing money for it, creating imaginary funds somewhere in the European Union,” he said, referring to Prime Minister Petr Fiala as “nothing more than Ursula von der Leyen in trousers.”
Acknowledging the tension between investment and debt reduction, Havlíček said, “We’re in a schizophrenic situation. Everyone wants to raise spending, and yet warns of dangerous indebtedness. But our debt level is still only half the EU average.” He also defended ANO’s pledge to raise pensions for seniors, saying, “We’re not as antisocial as this government. We will not take money from pensioners.”
ANO’s full election manifesto will be published on Sept. 4, just weeks before Czechs go to the polls in early October.
The party is currently expected to become the largest in the next parliament, but will likely not be able to govern alone.
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