Ahead of the 30 October Webinar: Budget Passed, Consolidation in Doubt, November Hike

CZECHIA - In Brief 23 Oct 2026 by Artur Radziwill

---

By Artur Radziwill and Jan HagemejerThere will be plenty to discuss at our launch webinar on 30 October, following the municipal and Senate elections and yesterday's critical budget vote, and ahead of the central bank's rate decision on 5 November. The 2027 budget cleared its first reading late on 22 October after 19.5 hours of debate, on 93 of the coalition's 108 votes, with two SPD deputies abstaining and the opposition's attempts to send it back defeated. This is the vote that counts, because first reading fixes the headline aggregates: revenue, expenditure, the deficit and how it is financed. Later readings can only move money between chapters. Second reading closes on 25 November and the third falls on 2 December. The majority of 93 is very narrow. 101 is needed for anything the opposition decides to block (either President Pavel veto or Senate’s), so the government has a buffer of seven votes, and it has already shown that the buffer is not reliable. This matters for every unpopular measure to come, above all for any spending cut. The deficit is CZK 386bn, the second largest on record, 3.5 percent of GDP on the Finance Ministry's own unadjusted forecast, and CZK 416bn once the Dukovany loan parked off-budget is counted. The harder question is the medium term, where the government back-loads its consolidation into 2028 and 2029. October's elections are a further reason to doubt it. The coalition won nothing in the Senate: ANO reached 13 of the 22 run-offs and lost every one, including the single seat it was defending, the first time the movement has taken no Senate seat at all. In the municipal vote it shed ground across the regional capitals and fell hardest in t...