Illustrative photo – Regular meeting of the Chamber of Deputies, February 21, 2023, Prague. Chairman of the SPD Tomio Okamura during the speech.
Prague – Chairman of the opposition SPD, Tomio Okamura, called on ANO to jointly turn to the Constitutional Court regarding the government's proposal for a lower June pension increase, which was approved by the House of Representatives today after several days of obstruction. The SPD does not have enough MPs, it has 20 of them, but at least 40 MPs are needed to apply to the Constitutional Court, Okamura said at the plenary session of the House of Representatives after the amendment was approved. At a press conference, the chairperson of the ANO club, Alena Schillerová, called Okamura's call a cry to the media and repeated that ANO has enough deputies to turn to the Constitutional Court on its own.
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Okamura once again called on the elected president Petr Pavel to veto the law. Pavel has already stated that he will comment after the inauguration, which will take place on Thursday. The ANO movement also wants to meet with Pavel and intends to convince him to veto the amendment.
“If Mr. President does not veto it, we will definitely file a constitutional complaint,” ANO chairman Andrej Babiš said at the press conference. Schiller said that the movement has already consulted with experts and that she sees a great chance of success in a possible challenge to the law at the Constitutional Court. On the other hand, Speaker of the House of Representatives Markéta Pekarová Adamová (TOP 09) told journalists that, according to her, the amendment to the law would stand up to the Constitutional Court.
Chairman of the SPD club Radim Fiala told journalists that in the event of a petition to the Constitutional Court, the deputies would contest the deliberations of the law in a state of legislative emergency. He is convinced that the legislative process was accompanied by errors, when the coalition pushed for a vote at the appointed time. According to him, the law is also somewhat retroactive. If the ANO movement itself turned to the Constitutional Court, Fiala thinks that nothing will happen. “And we will hope that they will write it correctly and that the Constitutional Court will support it,” he pointed out.
“They (the YES movement) already expressed last week that they would like to submit it themselves. a bit of politics, but I think it's impossible to politicize in this case,” added Okamura.
