Czech coal magnate and billionaire Pave Tykač is to finance the Václav Klaus Institute (IVK), which serves as an umbrella think-tank for voicing climate-sceptic views Czech ex-president Václav Klaus is known for, and who has also moved to the far-right of the political spectrum in recent years, openly declaring support of the Czexit party SPD.

“When I learnt a few days ago that PPF has ended many years of sponsoring the Institute of Václav Klaus and I was approached with a request for support, I decided immediately. I will financially support IVK,” Tykač wrote on his personal website in an entry about the upcoming 35th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, commemorating the 1989 fall of communism in then Czechoslovakia.

The richest Czech investment company, PPF, was instrumental in setting up IVK in 2012, with its PPF Banka being the largest sponsor of IVK.    

Tykač argued that “the role of Václav Klaus, just like the role of Václav Havel and Miloš Zeman", was “significant, outstanding and thoroughly positive”, and he also claimed that IVK represents “an important opinion stream in many contemporary debates, whether it is climate agenda, consolidation of public finances or the European Union.”  

While the late Havel was a communist-era dissident and internationally renowned playwright and philosopher, Klaus oversaw the country’s 1990s wild privatisation, which gave rise to current behemoth conglomerates such as PPF, and Zeman’s term was marked for his open ties to autocrats like Moscow’s Vladimir Putin and Beijing’s Xi Jinping.

Czech society continues to have ambivalent attitudes towards climate change. A recent major survey by Institute 2050 and published by the Czech Radio “České klima 2024" (Czech Climate 2024) found that Czechs consider climate change a serious issue, but only a minority of them feel threatened by it.

The survey shows that 52% of Czechs think that climate change issues need to be addressed “immediately” and 25% think that these need to be addressed in “this decade”, but the majority also views the EU’s Green Deal negatively. The Green Deal is criticised across much of the political spectrum, which is in large part scattered between populist, right-wing, and far-right parties.  

“When you have an empty glass, it will get filled with whatever is poured in, and here we let the theme of Green Deal be defined by populists,” commented the director of the Institute 2050, Jan Krajhanzl.