European Union’s Budget Allocation For Czech Republic During The Next 07 Years Is Unacceptable – Andrej Babis.

Prague; April 2026: The proposal for a new seven-year EU budget for the Czech Republic is absolutely unacceptable, according to Prime Minister Andrej Babis (ANO). Nominally, the contribution for the Czech Republic is to decrease by 228 billion crowns, there is no reason for that, he said. He expects a difficult debate that will last at least next year. He stated this today at a press conference before leaving for an informal summit of EU Prime Ministers in Cyprus.

Andrej Babis has reiterated that the Czech Republic also does not like the departure from the current system of distributing money according to ministries. Last Monday (20th April) he said that healthcare, for example, would deserve a special chapter. “Now the European Commission is coming and wants to give us one package, agriculture and cohesion, and then we are supposed to distribute it here. We do not like it”, he said. According to him, it is unacceptable for the Commission to distribute more money than should be allocated to individual member states.

The final agreement on the financial framework is due to be reached in December, so that individual legislative acts can be negotiated in 2027 and the budget can start to apply from 2028. The Cyprus presidency is currently holding meetings with representatives of individual EU states to obtain their positions. It should then present a first draft of the budget, with specific figures, during June so that EU leaders can debate it at the June EU summit.

According to observers, the negotiations will not be easy, as there are at least two different camps among the countries. The net contributors to the budget are, for example, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden. Meanwhile, Germany and the Netherlands in particular do not want to increase their contribution to the budget, because they already pay the most. The largest recipients, i.e., the countries that have received more money from the EU budget than they have paid, are Poland, Romania, Hungary, Greece, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. These countries are afraid that spending on agriculture and cohesion will be reduced and plan to fight to maintain them at the current level.

The Czech Republic is still a net beneficiary of the EU budget, but as the country grows richer, this may no longer be the case in the coming years, analysts say. Last year, the Czech Republic received CZK 31.1 billion more from the EU budget than it paid, the Ministry of Finance recently reported. Including revenues from the temporary EU Recovery Instrument of CZK 46.8 billion, the Czech Republic’s overall net position with the EU reached a positive balance of CZK 77.9 billion.

The seven-year budget covers all the EU’s basic spending, from subsidies to farmers and cohesion funds to support less developed regions, to building transport infrastructure and aid to developing countries. The European Commission published the first draft of the new budget from 2028, worth 1.8 trillion euros (43.9 trillion CZK) last July. It introduced several fundamental changes, saying it wanted it to be much more flexible.

The proposal was immediately criticised by the European Parliament. MEPs particularly opposed the merging of money for farmers and regions, which make up about half of the total EU budget, into single funds managed by the bloc’s 27 governments. This is a change from the current system, where regions played a key role in managing funding. This proposal for a single national envelope is unlikely to change, but the countries are demanding that the amounts allocated to the common agricultural policy and cohesion policy be no smaller than they have been so far.

Team Maverick.