COLUMN: The Czech Republic Is Divided on the Eve of Ankara — Babiš vs. the Constitution

A military career that speaks for itself

Petr Pavel is no armchair politician. He is a general. He commanded the Czech Army and then served as chairman of NATO’s Military Committee from 2015 to 2018—the highest military position in the North Atlantic Alliance. When he speaks of collective defense, military spending, and support for Ukraine, he isn’t speaking from the perspective of consultants’ reports. He speaks from decades of experience exercising command within an alliance he helped lead.

His election as Czech president in 2023 sent a strong signal from the electorate: the Czech Republic wanted a credible leader on the international stage, capable of representing a Central Europe firmly anchored in NATO and the European Union. Since Babiš’s return to power in December 2025, this credibility has become a constant source of friction between the two heads of the Czech executive branch.

Support for Ukraine as a dividing line

The dividing line is clear. Pavel is a staunch supporter of Ukraine. He believes that Ukrainian resistance protects Europe, that defense spending is an investment, not a cost, and that transatlantic solidarity is non-negotiable. Babiš, for his part, came to power promising not to fund military aid to Kyiv—a position he has maintained despite the commitments of his predecessors and pressure from allies.

This rift is not merely political. It is strategic. At the Ankara summit, the allies were set to discuss an additional 70 billion euros in aid for Ukraine. The presence of an isolationist Babiš without the counterweight of an Atlanticist Pavel would have sent a deeply negative signal. The Constitutional Court, without saying so explicitly, averted a disastrous Czech public relations blunder in front of NATO.

What Babiš truly feared was that Pavel would speak out loud in Ankara about what the Czech Republic really thinks about defense and Ukraine—and that it would differ from what Babiš wanted to convey. The Constitutional Court gave the country two voices rather than one. It’s not always comfortable, but that’s what democracy is supposed to produce.

A Platform Built on Rejecting the Burden

Andrej Babiš is a well-known figure on the Czech and European political scene: a billionaire and founder of the ANO movement, who has served as prime minister several times and has faced legal challenges on multiple occasions over his business practices and conflicts of interest. His return to power in December 2025 was based on an explicitly populist platform: cutting spending, distancing himself from collective defense commitments, and cultivating an image as a convenient partner for Trump’s Washington without the obligations that come with being an ally.

He cut $1 billion from the defense budget inherited from the previous administration. The Czech Republic was on track to meet NATO’s 2% of GDP target—he reversed that trajectory. The Czech Republic had built up a solid track record of military support for Ukraine—he put a stop to it. This is a policy that is consistent in its internal logic, even if it is disastrous in its strategic logic.

Trump’s Pressure as an Excuse

Babiš cites pressure from Trump to justify his desire to clarify the Czech position in Ankara. But he is doing exactly the opposite of what Trump actually demands: Trump demands that allies spend more on defense—up to 5% of GDP. Babiš has cut the defense budget. Trump complains about NATO free-riders—Babiš is precisely that kind of free-rider. Czech populism borrows Trump’s style without adopting his substantive positions on defense.

This is an intellectual sham that NATO allies see through very clearly. And that is what Pavel’s presence in Ankara was likely to expose in front of the other heads of state. A Czech president who knows NATO from the inside, who defends common-sense positions on defense, cannot be silenced by a prime minister seeking to shirk his responsibilities.

I find it fascinating that populists like Babiš claim to follow Trump’s lead while doing exactly what Trump accuses his allies of doing: failing to pay for their own defense. It’s a paradox that Trump’s America has not yet fully resolved. But it’s also an opportunity for European Atlanticists—including Pavel—to hold populism accountable for its own contradictions.

What exactly does the constitutional text say?

The Czech Constitution stipulates that the president is the representative of the state on the international stage. The government formulates and implements foreign policy—but it does so within the framework of an institutional coexistence with a president who, since 2013, has been directly elected by the people. Pavel argued that his exclusion from the delegation hindered the exercise of his constitutional duties. The Constitutional Court ruled in his favor—provisionally.

This provisional ruling is significant. The final decision on the division of powers between the president and the government regarding foreign policy is expected in September 2026. This final ruling will establish the legal precedent that will govern relations between the two institutions for years to come. The stakes go far beyond a single summit: the issue is defining who, in a situation of cohabitation, has the final say on the country’s international representation.

A Pre-existing Personal Conflict

The relationship between Pavel and the Babiš government was already strained before this crisis. Foreign Minister Petr Macinka had warned that he would make life difficult for Pavel after the president refused to appoint his party’s candidate to head the Czech Foreign Ministry. This personal hostility provided the backdrop against which the decision to exclude Ankara was made—likely as much to punish Pavel and test his resilience as to serve any coherent diplomatic objective.

In political coalitions, the temptation to turn substantive disagreements into institutional conflicts is always strong. What the Babiš government attempted was to use the procedure—the composition of the delegation—to marginalize a political opponent whom it cannot remove from office. The Constitutional Court said no. For now.

There is something profoundly dysfunctional about a system in which the prime minister must be compelled by a court order to bring his own president to an international summit. This is not an isolated Czech problem: it is a symptom of populism in power, which systematically tests institutional limits until it finds one it cannot cross.

How U.S. Pressure Is Dividing Allied Governments

The assessment of the situation provided by European diplomats is devastating: if NATO were to hold its next summit in Albania—a country that also fails to meet its defense commitments—Trump might get upset and generate “bad press.” This fear of a Trump-style reaction has become the primary factor in decision-making in some European capitals. And Babiš—a self-proclaimed Trump fan—has turned this into a political opportunity: by positioning himself as the champion of deference toward Washington, he can justify his defense cuts as strategic prudence.

But the reality is simpler and harsher: Trump wants allies who pay more, not less. Babiš pays less. His pro-Trump stance is therefore a political illusion: he adopts Trump’s rhetoric of distrust toward multilateral institutions without embracing Trump’s substance of increased defense spending. It’s pure populism: courting a Euroskeptic electoral base without paying the geopolitical price.

NATO Reels from Uneven Spending

The Ankara summit on July 7–8, 2026, brings together NATO’s 32 heads of state and government amid deep divisions over defense spending. Spain has refused to commit to the 5% of GDP target. Hungary is navigating its usual ambiguities. The Czech Republic is backtracking. Only the Baltic states, Poland, and a few others are truly doing their part. Trump’s push for a more European NATO—paradoxically—is generating both serious responses (the British plan, German rearmament) and populist resistance (Babiš, Orbán), which are undermining the Alliance’s collective credibility.

The Czech crisis is a metaphor for this rift: on one side, a president who embodies Atlanticist responsibility; on the other, a prime minister who embodies the temptation to disengage. This clash is playing out, in various forms, in several NATO member countries. The Constitutional Court has settled the matter in the Czech Republic. In other countries, the arbiter is not as effective.

The real question raised by the Czech crisis is not who is going to Ankara. It is: Can NATO function if some of its members send prime ministers who come to apologize for not paying, while their presidents want to commit more? This institutional schizophrenia is a structural weakness that Moscow is watching closely.

Two Leaders, Two Policies

The Czech Republic is experiencing political cohabitation in the strongest sense of the term: a president who has been directly elected since 2013, with his own powers in international affairs and defense, and a government that formulates and implements foreign policy. When the two heads of the executive branch are in agreement, the system works. When they are in deep ideological disagreement—as has been the case since December 2025—every decision becomes a potential source of conflict.

The Pavel-Babiš coexistence is among the most tense in recent Czech political history. Their positions diverge on almost everything related to security policy: defense spending, support for Ukraine, and the country’s stance toward NATO and the European Union. Pavel wants greater commitment. Babiš wants fewer obligations. The Constitutional Court has become the forum for resolving these fundamental differences.

The Democratic Paradox

There is a striking democratic paradox in this situation. Pavel was elected by Czech citizens to represent their country. Babiš was elected by Czech citizens to govern. Both, therefore, have legitimate democratic mandates—but their positions on the most pressing foreign policy issues are diametrically opposed. In a sense, Czech citizens voted for both sides at the same time. The Constitutional Court is the only institution capable of resolving this contradiction before it becomes unmanageable.

This is not a failure of democracy—it is democracy in all its complexity. Voters express multiple and sometimes contradictory preferences. Institutions must then manage this complexity. The fact that the Czech Constitutional Court has functioned—quickly, effectively, and provisionally—is good news regarding the state of the rule of law in the Czech Republic.

I remain struck by the Constitutional Court’s speed: an emergency injunction issued within a few days, and a deadline for accreditation met. This is the rule of law in action. On a continent where several populist governments are attacking their constitutional courts, the Czech Republic’s institutional strength deserves to be highlighted.

What Kyiv Expected from Prague

For Kyiv, this is not an abstract issue. Under previous governments, the Czech Republic was one of Ukraine’s most active suppliers of arms—particularly artillery shells, obtained through third-party procurement channels outside official NATO channels. Babiš’s return to power, with his promise to stop funding military aid, created a real gap in Ukraine’s supply chain.

Pavel’s presence in Ankara was therefore political and symbolic: to demonstrate that the Czech Republic is not monolithically disengaged, that influential voices in Prague continue to advocate for support for Ukraine, and that Babiš’s withdrawal does not represent the country’s unanimous position. For a summit set to confirm 70 billion euros in aid to Ukraine, having a credible Czech representative at the negotiating table holds concrete diplomatic value.

70 billion euros and the skeptics

Ankara’s pledge of 70 billion euros in aid to Ukraine requires the endorsement of all NATO members. Members who, like the Czech Republic under Babiš, have slashed their defense budgets and refused to contribute to aid for Ukraine weaken the collective credibility of this commitment. If the 32 members fail to reach a unified position, the summit’s final declaration risks sounding hollow—exactly what Moscow hopes for.

The Czech crisis has shown that the divide is not between NATO member countries—it is an internal divide within member countries, between governing institutions that advocate opposing policies. This type of internal dysfunction is more difficult for the Alliance to manage than disagreements between members, precisely because it eludes the usual diplomatic mechanisms.

There is something deeply symbolic about the fact that the Czech Constitutional Court became, for a few days, a key player in NATO policy. This is not the role for which it was designed. But in a world where populists use institutional procedures as political weapons, constitutional courts are becoming unexpected bulwarks of Atlanticist coherence.

Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia: The Problematic Bloc

The crisis in the Czech Republic does not occur in a vacuum. It illustrates a broader trend in Central Europe: the rise of populist governments that, while remaining members of NATO and the European Union, seek to minimize their defense obligations and resist collective pressure to support Ukraine. Orbán’s Hungary is the most prominent example. Fico’s Slovakia is another. And now Babiš’s Czech Republic.

This informal bloc of reluctance creates friction within the Alliance’s workings. It cannot block decisions—NATO operates by consensus on major issues, but financial commitments are bilateral or multilateral and not covered by the treaty. But it can erode the political credibility of collective commitments, create areas of ambiguity that Moscow knows how to exploit, and send dangerous signals to other members tempted to reduce their contributions.

The Institutional Counterweight

What sets the Czech Republic apart from other cases is precisely the strength of its institutional framework: a Constitutional Court that acts swiftly, a president with direct legitimacy independent of the government, and a civil society and press that follow these issues closely. These institutional checks and balances do not give Pavel the upper hand on the merits—Babiš’s policy on defense spending and aid to Ukraine remains in place. But they prevent things from spiraling completely out of control, keep the complexity of the Czech position visible on the international stage, and preserve spaces where responsible positions can continue to be heard.

This is a lesson for democracies under populist pressure: institutions matter. Not always in spectacular ways. Sometimes simply by forcing a prime minister to bring his president to a NATO summit.

The Czech Republic is not Hungary. Orbán has methodically dismantled institutional checks and balances for fifteen years. Babiš is just getting started—and he has just run up against a Constitutional Court that actually works. That doesn’t mean a drift toward authoritarianism is impossible. It means it will cost more.

The President’s Position in Plain Terms

Petr Pavel was transparent about his intentions: he would attend the leaders’ dinner and the plenary session the following day. He would respect the government’s official positions—but that would not prevent him from expressing them as he saw fit, based on his own convictions and personal analysis. He cited established custom: “The government should follow established practice until the Court issues its ruling. The president, as head of state, should have the opportunity to represent… as head of the delegation.”

This cautious wording reveals the fundamental tension of the power-sharing arrangement: Pavel does not want to turn the NATO summit into a Czech political circus. He knows that images of disunity are precisely what his opponents want to create—and what Moscow would like to see. His presence in Ankara is therefore calculated to be both firm and measured: visible, credible, and committed to the Alliance, without turning every statement into an open challenge to his prime minister.

A Role That Is More Symbolic Than Decision-Making

The reality is that, within the mechanics of a NATO summit, the head of delegation carries more symbolic weight than decision-making authority. Decisions are prepared in advance through multilateral diplomatic processes that summits ratify rather than create. The value of Pavel’s presence in Ankara, therefore, lies primarily in the signal it sends: the Czech Republic is not united in its disengagement; important Czech voices remain in favor of Atlantic solidarity and support for Ukraine.

This signal is valuable to the allies—particularly those who must explain to their own parliaments why they continue to commit financially even as some members hold back. And it is valuable to Ukraine, which monitors every NATO summit as a barometer of its Western support.

I cannot predict exactly what Pavel said in the corridors of Ankara. But I know what his presence signified: that there are statesmen and stateswomen within Western democracies who refuse to let populists alone define their countries’ policies. It is a small victory in a long war of institutional attrition.

How a U.S. Presidency Undermines Its Own Allies

The Czech crisis is, among other things, a side effect of the Trump era. By endorsing Euroskeptic European populists as acceptable political partners, publicly criticizing multilateral institutions, and cultivating direct relationships with leaders like Orbán and Babiš, the Trump administration has lent international legitimacy to policies that, without this implicit support, would have been more difficult to sell politically.

Babiš can cut the defense budget and refuse aid to Ukraine in part because he calculates that his alignment with Trump affords him a form of protection—or at least tolerance—from the U.S. administration. This calculation may be mistaken, especially if Trump decides tomorrow that allies in Central Europe must pay more, not less. But as long as this calculation remains plausible, it fuels a policy of disengagement that weakens NATO from within.

Trump as a Necessary Evil and a Structural Risk

Trump is a necessary evil for the West: his pressure has forced rearmament that the complacency of the past would never have produced. But his endorsement of anti-Atlanticist populism creates a structural risk to NATO’s cohesion that simply increasing budgets cannot offset. An alliance in which certain members are ideologically disengaging from the collective project—even if they participate in it formally—is a weakened alliance. The Czech crisis is a microcosm of this.

The real test is not whether Pavel goes to Ankara. The real test is whether the Czech Republic—and countries like it—will ultimately approve substantial defense budgets and concrete commitments to aid Ukraine. The Constitutional Court can compel attendance. It cannot compel conviction.

Trump is doing to Europe what crises do to individuals: they reveal who we really are. Some allies are rearming. Others are just pretending. The Czech crisis shows that even within a single country, the divide can run deep. And that institutions—when they hold—can make the difference between cohesion and disarray.

The Upcoming Ruling on Presidential Powers

The Constitutional Court’s June 24 ruling was provisional. The final ruling on the division of powers between the president and the government regarding foreign policy is expected in September 2026. This ruling will be crucial: if it strengthens presidential powers in matters of international representation, it will give Pavel a solid legal basis to influence Czech foreign policy even in the face of a hostile government. If it restricts those powers, Babiš will have more leeway to marginalize the presidency.

Legal observers note that the Czech Constitution, drafted in 1993, did not anticipate the kind of antagonistic coexistence we see today. Its ambiguities regarding the respective powers of the president and the prime minister in foreign policy are precisely what the Court will have to clarify. The outcome will reshape the contours of the Czech semi-presidential system for years to come.

The Implications for Upcoming Summits

The issue of the Czech Republic’s international representation will not be limited to Ankara. It will arise at every NATO summit, every European Council meeting, and every multilateral diplomatic conference. If the Pavel-Babiš coexistence continues—and presidential elections are not imminent—every major international gathering will be a potential source of conflict. The legal clarification in September is therefore of institutional significance that goes far beyond the ego clash in Ankara.

And for Ukraine, which is closely monitoring every political move in Central Europe, the Czech trajectory remains a cause for concern. A Babiš government bolstered by a favorable constitutional ruling would be bad news for Kyiv. A government constrained by the Court and the presidency would send a more nuanced signal—and perhaps one more representative of what Czech citizens truly want.

I often think of those constitutional texts drafted amid the optimism of the 1990s, when Central European democracies believed they had definitively turned the page on their authoritarian past. They didn’t imagine Babiš. They didn’t imagine Trump. They didn’t imagine that their institutions would have to withstand elected populists who use legal procedures to circumvent the spirit of the law. And yet, the institutions are holding up. Sometimes barely. But they’re holding up.

Transparency as Resistance

The Pavel-Babiš crisis was laid bare in all its complexity by the Czech and international press, which documented every step: Monday’s announcement, the presidential request, the court’s decision on Wednesday, Friday’s deadline, and compliance the following Monday. This transparency is not a luxury—it is a mechanism for accountability. When a government’s decisions are visible, illegitimate maneuvers are harder to carry out.

The Czech media played their part. The international press—from Reuters to U.S. News, from the Prague Daily to European publications—reported on the story and provided context. This made Babiš’s position internationally untenable: forcing the exclusion of a pro-Atlanticist president from a NATO summit in full view of all the allies was a politically too costly move to sustain.

What Czech Citizens Stand to Gain

Czech citizens are caught between two conflicting democratic mandates. They voted for Pavel because they wanted a credible representative on the international stage. They voted for Babiš because they wanted a break from what they perceived as excessive European and Atlantic obligations. This contradiction is real—and the Czech political system must manage it without tearing itself apart.

The Ankara crisis did not resolve this contradiction. It simply brought it to light. And visibility is the first prerequisite for democratic debate. Czech citizens now know exactly what the two heads of their executive branch stand for—and they will be able to judge in the next election whether what they have seen suits them.

Democracy does not guarantee perfect results. It guarantees that mistakes are visible and can be corrected. The Czech crisis has been visible. Its resolution will depend on the upcoming elections—and on a Constitutional Court that continues to do its job.

What Other Democracies Can Learn

The Pavel-Babiš crisis offers a valuable lesson for European democracies facing similar pressures: institutions hold firm if they have been built on a solid foundation and if courageous actors are willing to invoke them. The Constitutional Court played its part. Pavel played his. The government ultimately complied with the ruling. This is a cycle that must be repeated whenever populists test the limits—and for this cycle to work, institutional actors must have the courage to resist.

It is in the European Union’s and NATO’s interest for their members’ national institutions to remain strong. An alliance of states governed by the rule of law is structurally more reliable than an alliance of regimes wavering between democracy and populism. Czech institutional resilience is therefore, for NATO, a strategic asset on par with defense budgets.

Ukraine as a Touchstone for European Values

The war in Ukraine has created a test of values that European democracies cannot avoid. Whether to support Kyiv or not, whether to honor defense obligations or not, whether to maintain transatlantic solidarity or not: these choices reveal what each government truly believes democracy to be and what it is willing to do to defend it. Babiš answered this question in the negative. Pavel answers it in the affirmative. And the Czech institutions, for the time being, have sided with Pavel.

This is not the end of the story. The decision in September 2026 could tip the balance. The upcoming Czech elections may strengthen Babiš or stand up to him. But for now, the chronicle of an ordinary constitutional crisis has turned into a brief manifesto on what Europe wants to be. And what it wants to be is the most important value that Ukraine is helping us defend.

I’ll end this column with a conviction I cannot keep to myself: if Ukraine loses, it won’t be solely because Russia is strong. It will also be because the Andrej Babišes of every country in Europe will have eroded, one by one, the collective commitments that were the West’s strength. The Czech Constitutional Court has said “no” once. We must continue to say no.

What This Crisis Tells Us About the Western Alliance

The Pavel-Babiš-Constitutional Court saga might seem trivial in the broader narrative of the war in Ukraine and the geopolitical tensions of 2026. That would be a misreading. It reveals with surgical precision the internal divisions running through Western democracies: between Atlanticists and isolationists, between those who understand that collective security comes at a price and those who want to benefit from it without paying for it, between institutions of the rule of law and the populist reflexes that circumvent them.

These divisions are not new. But they are more dangerous in the context of a war in Europe that demands cohesion, continuity, and credibility. The Czech Constitutional Court has, for the time being, upheld the consistency of its country’s international stance. It did what it was created to do: apply the law regardless of the political expediency of the moment. This is commonplace. And in today’s world, it is heroic.

Ukraine at the Heart of the Czech Political Divide

What Bábiš does not understand—or refuses to understand—is that the war in Ukraine is not a matter of distant humanitarian aid. It is a matter of the survival of European democracies. When the Czech Republic cuts its defense budget and refuses to contribute to Kyiv, it is not protecting its citizens. It is putting them at even greater risk. This is the lesson Pavel is conveying, and one that the Constitutional Court has, independently, validated through its ruling.

Ukraine is at the center of this crisis because it is at the center of the war of values in Europe. Whether to support Kyiv or not, whether to fund arms or not, whether to align with Washington or not—these are issues that cut through the Czech, Polish, Hungarian, and Slovak electorates like a knife. What Pavel represents in Ankara is a Central Europe that has not abandoned the project of Atlantic solidarity despite populist pressure. This is not a decisive victory. It is resistance. And in a long war, resistance has its own dignity.

Zelensky and his team aren’t just looking at military spending and equipment deliveries. They’re also looking at who is fighting to maintain support for Ukraine within the institutional inner workings of allied democracies. Petr Pavel—forced to go to Ankara by a court order—is one of those institutional fighters. In the moral geography of this war, he deserves to be recognized as such.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist