Petr Pavel

Biography

Petr Pavel was born in 1961 in Planá, in western Czechoslovakia, into a military family. He attended the military grammar school in Opava and graduated from the military university in Vyškov in 1983, when he joined the paratroopers as a reconnaissance platoon leader. He applied to join the Communist Party in 1983, was admitted in 1985 and remained a member until the Velvet Revolution, and from 1988 he trained for military intelligence.

After 1989 he served in the new Czech army. In 1993, as a UN peacekeeper during the Croatian war, he led the evacuation of French troops from the besieged Karin Base, which brought him international recognition. He took a master's degree at King's College London in 2005-2006, was chief of the Czech general staff from 2012 to 2015 and then chaired NATO's Military Committee from 2015 to 2018, the first officer from a former Eastern Bloc country to hold the post. He retired after 34 years of service.

Pavel announced a run for president in 2021 on a platform of close ties with NATO and the European Union and support for Ukraine. He won the first round in January 2023 with about 35 percent and beat former prime minister Andrej Babiš in the runoff with 58 percent, and he was inaugurated on 9 March 2023 as the fourth president of the Czech Republic.

As president he has appointed several Constitutional Court justices and travelled widely. After the 2025 parliamentary election he appointed Babiš prime minister but refused to accept Filip Turek as a minister, and in June 2026 he sued the government after it excluded him from the NATO summit in Ankara.