The Czech government did not include the president in the country's delegation to the next NATO summit. The President filed a lawsuit

The Czech government of Andrej Babis has decided not to include President Petr Pavel in the delegation to the NATO summit in Ankara on July 7. The President filed a complaint with the Constitutional Court.

The fact that Pavel was excluded from the delegation at the summit in July became known the day before, on Monday. The delegation from the Czech Republic will be headed by Prime Minister Andrej Babis. Defense Minister Jaromir Zuna and Foreign Minister Piotr Macinka will accompany him to the summit.

Babis justified this decision on “purely practical reasons.” The meeting will focus mainly on the allies' defense spending commitments: Prague has not fulfilled these commitments and "will now be in a position where it will have to explain why this happened," he writes.

“The talk that this is on our part deliberately against Mr. President or that we are prohibiting him from doing something is absolute nonsense,” Babis concludes his post on Twitter (X), clarifying that the president has already made a number of foreign trips.

As the local publication Novinky notes , the Czech Republic was previously represented at NATO summits by both presidents and prime ministers. Formally, the head of the state becomes the head of the delegation with the participation of the president. The dispute over who will represent Prague at this summit has been going on for several months, with the government repeatedly delaying the announcement of the composition of the delegation.

The country's president himself called Babis' decision "an unprecedented and extremely unfortunate step." He points out that the representation of the state at the external level is essentially the job responsibilities of the president:

“This dispute is not really about one chair at one foreign meeting. "This is a deliberate decision by the government to exclude the President, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and former senior NATO official , from the Alliance summit at a time when he could have used his many years of experience for the benefit of the security of the Czech Republic and its citizens."

On Tuesday it also became known that Pavel appealed to the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic. In the lawsuit, he asks judges to determine who can make decisions about the president's participation in summits of this level. In response, Babis stated that he did not consider it “correct” for officials to file complaints against each other.

The president filed the complaint the day before, which was confirmed by the court's press secretary. According to her, the decision on this claim will be made as a priority - it will be considered on Wednesday.

This is not the first conflict between Pavel and representatives of the Babis government. In January of this year, the president said that Foreign Minister Piotr Macinka conveyed messages to him through an adviser, which he regarded as an attempt at blackmail. The conflict then flared up around appointments to the Cabinet of Ministers.