Relations between Czech President Petr Pavel and Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s government have deteriorated almost since the government took office in December 2025. A few months ago, the political conflict culminated in an unprecedented dispute over the President’s participation in the upcoming NATO summit in Ankara and prompted an unusually swift intervention by the Czech Constitutional Court. After the government had tried to prevent the President from attending the NATO summit, he filed a competence complaint and a request for an interim measure on 22 June 2026. Just two days later, on 24 June 2026, the Court released its decision granting an interim measure and ordering the government to facilitate President Petr Pavel’s participation in the NATO summit. The decision also includes one dissenting opinion by two judges and is remarkable for its extraordinary speed. Such urgency is unusual but understandable given that the summit is held from 7 to 8 July 2026.

The Constitutional Court’s unusually swift intervention cannot be fully understood from the reasoning of the interim measure itself. The decision becomes considerably more intelligible once it is read against the political chronology omitted from the decision, particularly the government’s decision to postpone the dispute until judicial protection was almost impossible. Remarkably, the majority never explains why the statutory conditions for granting an interim measure were satisfied. Instead, it rests on only two considerations: Firstly, the urgency created by the approaching NATO summit and secondly, the long-standing constitutional practice of presidential participation. By contrast, the dissenting opinion engages in a much more detailed analysis of the legal requirements for granting interim measure. To understand the dispute, one must first start with the broader political context.

From Disagreement to Competence Complaint

Tensions between President Petr Pavel and the current government (led by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, leader of the ANO 2011 party) have existed since Andrej Babiš took office in 2025. One of the earliest flashpoints concerned the President’s refusal to appoint Filip Turek, a nominee of the Motorists party, as Minister of the Environment. The decision angered Motorists leader Petr Macinka, who subsequently became Foreign Minister and emerged as one of the President’s most vocal critics within the Government. The dispute over the failure to appoint a minister escalated to such an extent that the president published on his official website screenshots of text messages that the Foreign Minister sent to the President’s advisor, in which he allegedly blackmailed the President.

Fast forward to today, the latest conflict between the President and the Government concerned President Pavel’s participation in the NATO summit in Ankara. Traditionally, Czech presidents have participated in NATO summits as members of the official Czech delegation. However, on 18 March 2026, Prime Minister Andrej Babiš stated that he would attend the summit without the president: “I think it would be best if I went there with Petr Macinka, because we’ll explain it better than the president.” The remark referred to President Pavel’s public criticism of the government’s defence spending and reflected the Prime Minister’s view that his government, rather than the President, should explain Czech defence policy to NATO allies. President Pavel repeatedly invoked his constitutional authority to represent the state abroad in accordance with Article 63(1)a of the Czech Constitution. In an attempt to personally defend his position and seek a compromise, the President attended a government meeting on 8 June 2026. The government nevertheless postponed its decision until 22 June – only four days before the deadline for notifying NATO of the composition of the Czech delegation – and ultimately adopted a resolution excluding the President from the summit. From the President’s perspective, the delay left him with virtually no time to seek judicial protection before the notification deadline. Yet the following day he filed a competence complaint and requested interim measures from the Constitutional Court.

The President’s Constitutional Claim

The President’s competence complaint raises a broader question than the Ankara summit alone. At its core lies the meaning of the constitutional power to “represent the state externally” under Article 63(1)a of the Czech Constitution. Czech constitutional law has long struggled with the ambiguous division of foreign affairs powers between the President and the government. The Constitution simultaneously grants representative functions to the President while making the government responsible for the country’s overall policy direction. The President’s argument appears relatively straightforward. If the Constitution entrusts him with representing the state externally, participation in a NATO summit constitutes a paradigmatic exercise of that competence. Governmental attempts to prevent such participation, therefore, amount to an unconstitutional appropriation of presidential authority. Importantly, the President did not merely seek permission to attend one particular summit. He also requested a general clarification of constitutional competences regarding future NATO summits. The dispute is therefore not limited to Ankara. It concerns the future constitutional balance between the President and the government in the conduct of foreign relations.

At the same time, the President requested an interim measure. Without it, there was a significant risk that the summit would take place before the Court had an opportunity to resolve the underlying constitutional question. Once the NATO summit concluded, any victory in securing participation would become practically meaningless. This argument persuaded the majority, which, in its decision, presented two arguments: Firstly, the deadline for notifying the organizers of the NATO summit of the composition of the Czech Republic’s official delegation was on Friday, 26 June. Secondly, the president’s participation in NATO summits as an established and long-standing practice. However, this opinion didn’t convince all the judges.

Competing Understandings of Interim Protection

The dissent adopted a much more legally demanding standard. Judges Jan Wintr and Dita Řepková questioned whether the conditions for the interim measure had truly been satisfied. They acknowledged that interim measures are not categorically excluded in competence disputes. Through the subsidiary and reasonable application of the Code of Civil Procedure, two conditions are set: (1) the need to temporarily adjust the parties’ circumstances, or (2) concern that the enforcement of a court decision may be jeopardised. But the statutory conditions for granting an interim measure were not met because the President’s absence from a single NATO summit would neither require an urgent temporary adjustment of the parties’ legal relations nor jeopardise the effectiveness of the Court’s future judgment, whose principal purpose is to clarify the constitutional allocation of powers for the future. The dissent also challenged the majority’s reliance on established practice. The fact that presidents have historically attended NATO summits does not necessarily demonstrate that the Constitution requires such attendance or that a temporary deviation from past practice justifies emergency judicial intervention. Previous practice simply does not indicate that the President alone could have decided on participation despite the government’s disagreement.

The Politics Behind the Decision

The legal disagreement between the majority and the dissent is important. The President justified the need for an interim measure mainly by arguing that a judgment on the merits might come too late to allow him to attend the Ankara summit. The majority’s reasoning is strikingly concise and rests on the two considerations. As the dissent convincingly argues, the statutory conditions for granting an interim measure do not appear to have been fully satisfied. Nevertheless, the most intriguing aspect of the case may lie elsewhere. From the perspective of positive law, the decision therefore raises questions. The majority did not explain in any detail how the statutory requirements for granting an interim measure, applied subsidiarily through the Code of Civil Procedure, were satisfied.  At the same time, one cannot ignore the government’s conduct. After months of negotiations, it postponed its final decision until only four days before the deadline for notifying NATO of the Czech delegation. Whether deliberate or not, this timing effectively left the President with almost no opportunity to obtain judicial protection before the practical consequences became irreversible. The political context may therefore help explain why the Court acted with such exceptional speed. After all, the interim measure may have been motivated not only by legal urgency but also by concern that the political conflict itself was approaching a point of no return. In a sense, the Court forced the President and the government to continue cooperating, at least temporarily, rather than allowing their relationship to break down irreversibly before the constitutional question had been resolved.

What Comes Next?

The prime minister has already confirmed that the government will accredit the President for the NATO summit. The Court may have settled the question of accreditation, but not the underlying institutional conflict. The President now stated that as head of state, he leads the Czech delegation, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs now opposes the President’s participation in the informal leaders’ dinner at the summit.

The central constitutional question of the competence complaint remains unresolved. When (and if) the Court reaches a merit judgment, it will have to confront a difficult issue at the heart of the Czech constitutional system: What is the true meaning of the presidential power to represent the state externally? Does it entail an autonomous right to participate in major international meetings? Or does such participation ultimately depend on governmental consent? The Court’s eventual judgment will likely extend far beyond NATO summits. It may influence future disputes concerning European Council meetings, international summits and conferences, state visits, and other forms of external representation. Whether this pragmatic approach will carry over into the Court’s merits judgment remains to be seen. What is already clear, however, is that the Court has chosen to preserve the existing constitutional practice before deciding whether that practice is constitutionally required.

The post Don’t Leave the President at Home appeared first on Verfassungsblog.