Czechia’s new interim environment minister, Petr Macinka, scrapped the ministry’s climate protection section Thursday, saying the department needs to be “de-ideologized.”
Macinka had promised ahead of the country’s Oct. 3-4 election that “green blood will run,” and on taking office Dec. 15 announced that “the climate crisis is over today.”
“In the new staffing structure of the Ministry of the Environment that we are preparing for January 1, 2026, the climate protection section is no longer included,” Macinka wrote on social media Thursday evening.
Macinka is the leader of the right-wing Motorists for Themselves party, which is part of the country’s ruling coalition under new Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš. He leads the environment ministry temporarily after the party’s original nominee, Filip Turek, was hospitalized with a herniated disc.
