Britské listy Interview 714. What state subsidies do the Czech oligarchs Křetínský and Tykač receive?

16. 9. 2025

 

Albín Sybera: Dear viewers of Britské listy, welcome to another episode of Britské listy Interviews. Today I am joined by Radek Kubala, who has also appeared on Britské listy Interviews in the past, from the research organization Re-set. He is here with me, among other things, because Re-set has published a new report quantifying the amount of public funds flowing into the companies of oligarch Daniel Křetínský's EP Group and Sev.en Energy Group, another energy company owned by the well-known oligarch Pavel Tykač. These funds come not only from public sources in the Czech Republic, but also from EU sources in other European Union countries and, more generally, from Europe as a whole, as this includes the United Kingdom.

Radek Kubala: That's 277 billion crowns that both Sev.en Energy and EP Group have received in the last 10 years, because we looked at the last 10 years, mainly looking at direct subsidies and any compensation. We looked at capacity mechanisms, and this is the final figure. Most of it consists of subsidies to EP Group, because it is a large pan-European company and has some 253 billion crowns there. Tykač accounts for some 23 billion. What does it consist of? And what are the most important findings: Daniel Křetínský and his company EP Group are the largest recipients of money through capacity mechanisms, which is money that states pay to private individuals to keep power plants in a so-called standby mode so that they can be used, for example, in winter when more energy is needed. And EP Group is the European leader in this area. They have contracts worth 4 billion euros. The second, which is Poland's Orlen, has 2.8 billion, so there is a big jump there. They are confidently in first place. Sev.en also falls into this category, ranking twelfth with 843 million. As for other important figures, we are, of course, most interested in the figures for the Czech Republic, where we have calculated that EP Group has invested some CZK 14.2 billion, most of which goes to the modernization fund, which EP Group pays for new gas-fired power plants.

It is important to mention, however, that EPG is requesting another 7.3 billion, so it may soon grow by another 7 billion. For Tykač, we calculated 2.1 billion here in Czechia. Most of it, a large part of it, is attributable to transformations, but here it is important to mention what we did not include in the calculation. For example, there are billion-dollar contracts that Sev.en has concluded in the past with state institutions such as the army, the railways, certain ministries, the Prague Castle administration, and so on. And that worked out for us methodologically, but I'm only saying this so that there is no impression that the Czech state is primarily subsidizing Křetínský here, although by other methods that did not fit into our methodology, it also finances and keeps Pavel Tykač's business alive. These are probably the most important findings for us. We also have figures for Slovakia, where there is also a lot, for Germany, and the United Kingdom. We have well-calculated subsidies for biomass, which the EP Group receives in the hundreds of millions of euros in several countries, in Italy. In Great Britain, in Czechia, and in France, well, all of this can be found in the report and I think it has been calculated quite well.

Albín Sybera: So perhaps just a little addendum to the first question: you are also saying that the figure is most likely higher in reality. Considering that, as you mentioned in your methodology, you simply went after the two entities EP Group and Sev.en Energy. For example, it was discussed in Britské listy and elsewhere in the media, so the waste management company Av.cz, in which Daneil Křetínský has a large stake, is being investigated by the police, and I think that according to the latest developments, it is heading to court for reducing landfill fees, systematically and also in the enormous amount of 100 million, so we are still only talking about that segment in the energy sector.

Radek Kubala: Yes, exactly, it's a segment of the energy sector and it's only direct subsidies. We didn't count indirect subsidies, such as tax breaks, or the fact that both companies, both holding companies, have companies that pay taxes in Luxembourg, Cyprus, and so on. We did not include that. And even so, I think that the amount of money is relatively large.

Albín Sybera: In recent years, practically since the outbreak of the energy crisis, we have also been able to observe Daniel Křetínský's great appetite for further investments in Czechia and Europe. And perhaps to a lesser extent, the same can be said about Pavel Tykač. Would you say that their investment appetite is expanding the range of opportunities for them to get their hands on more public funds?

Radek Kubala: Definitely yes. We can see it, as I said, we have been monitoring the period since 2015, but it is clear that they have been receiving the largest subsidies and the largest amounts of public money in recent years, whether it be capacity mechanisms or, most notably, the modernization fund, which is money that has been flowing in recent years. It is precisely through the funds that they are able to use, the funds they have for decarbonization. The decarbonization fund consists of revenues from emission allowances, which are supposed to be used to reduce emissions, to decarbonize, and we are paying for it here. We pay Křetínský, relatively speaking, 3 billion, as we have found out, 3 billion of which went to municipalities and some 11 billion went to Křetínský's new gas-fired power plants. So, certainly, you could say that part of the business model is the ability to collect money from these funds for new projects.

Albín Sybera: I would like to ask another question in this context. About a year or two ago, I was working on a report from Most for the English-language website Intellinews, where many people, when asked about the energy transformation in the Ústí nad Labem region or in general in the Czech north in the mining regions, repeatedly described to me that in those years, when the energy transition was supposed to be subsidized, a lot of the funds ended up in large companies instead of simply ending up in the region. So you see that there is a risk here, and we were talking about the previous EU budget period, so is this risk repeating itself?

Radek Kubala: Not only is it repeating itself, it is happening right now. Even our report shows that what people in the north are saying is simply true, that most of the money goes to large companies, whether it is the Just Transition Fund, where we described the Sev.en projects, or the Modernization Fund, where it is particularly noticeable. More than half of the money went to nine large companies, the nine largest companies. Křetínský is not the only large company receiving money from the Modernization Fund; there are also ČSV, Olia, and other players. And we believe that this is precisely the money that should go towards the development of community energy, towards the development of projects. Municipal projects, clean renewable energy, the development of energy cooperatives, and so on, and this is not primarily happening here; primarily, the money is flowing to the big players, and we see this as a big problem.

Albín Sybera: I have to ask about one more paradox. When we follow Daniel Křetínský, his public appearances, which are not many, but nevertheless in the German press, I think that over the last year he has criticized the European Union, criticized its environmental policy because it is ideological, and to me, he reminded me a little of Andrej Babiš, the former prime minister, and perhaps very soon the new prime minister of the Czech Republic, who is criticized in the Czech media for his critical stance towards the European Union, because at the same time his Agrofert company receives huge subsidies. How does Daniel Křetínský differ from Andrej Babiš? Is it only in that he is not in politics, unlike Babiš, or in the amount of subsidies that the EP Group receives?

Radek Kubala: That's one thing. He is openly involved in politics, Babiš influences things through his income, while Křetínský is more in the background, but he influences things in the same way, just using different methods. For example, by owning the media, he influences the whole debate. We have one interesting comparison here: when we calculated the subsidies that went to Agrofert and the EP Group between 2022 and 2024, the EP Group received twice as much in subsidies during those years. And let's remember that this is the period, the years 2022-2024, when we were going through the so-called energy crisis and when energy companies recorded record profits. I think that Křetínský tripled his influence during those years, and in the same period, EP Group essentially had double the income from subsidies compared to Agrofert, which I find an interesting comparison in the context of how much attention is being paid to the way Andrej Babiš receives public funds, so he is not the only one doing this, and there are people who are significantly better at it. What I think is that Křetínský's criticism of the European Union is, unlike Babiš's, smarter, more sophisticated, let's say. But it also stems from the fact that Babiš is simply scoring political points through it, which Křetínský does not need to do because he directly influences the decisions. And he is a player at the pan-European level, not just here in Czechia, so that's how he conducts his criticism, so it's more refined, but the results are quite similar.

Albín Sybera: Your answer reminds me that over the last year, we have seen Daniel Křetínský increase his stake in power plants in Slovakia. He increased it to around 70 percent when he bought the share of the Italian NEL Group, and here's an interesting point: I would say that the opposition in Slovakia criticized the populist Prime Minister Robert Fico quite sharply for this, including, I think, former Minister Hirman, who is from the party of former Prime Minister Heger, with whom the current Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala had good relations. I would say that these were politically and ideologically similar positions, but on the one hand, we can see this in Slovakia, but in the Czech Republic, from Petr Fiala, we have not heard any criticism of Daniel Křetínský, if I remember correctly. Have you noticed this too? Perhaps it is part of Daniel Křetínský's clever strategy, as you mentioned, to divert attention away from the fact that in our country, positions that are criticized in other countries are not criticized here.

Radek Kubala: That's right. It's also because Křetínský has historically been close to the ODS, whether to Topolánek or other people who still have a say within the party, so it's not surprising that Petr Fiala doesn't criticize Křetínský. It's also because he owns the media here, which he doesn't in Slovakia. However, as far as the Slovak power plants are concerned, it had long been agreed that when Mochovce was completed, EPH would take over 33 others. So it was not surprising at all, and I have not fully studied the opposition's criticism of why they criticized Fico, but I think that in this particular case, it was part of the deal from the beginning, so I expected it to happen.

Albín Sybera: Going back to your report, you mentioned in the methodology section that data collection was not entirely straightforward in the sense that the data is not always available, or the data that is available is incomplete or not entirely reliable. And that applies to the Czech Republic as well as other countries. Would you like to comment on that as well? Does this also point to the fact that there are simply not enough investigative media groups or researchers working on this issue? I am referring to how public funds are handled and how much of them end up in the hands of large corporations owned by people such as Mr. Křetínský and Mr. Tykač.

Radek Kubala: That's right. I think that nowadays it wouldn't be that difficult to have a tool, whether pan-European or just national, that would store this information in detail, in today's digital form. It would be guaranteed by some state institution, where people could simply click to access the information. We had to do it in a very complicated way here, where, for example, the subsidy register, where there are fewer subsidies than there are, and there is almost no information about them. There is a state watchdog, but it is run by civil society and the information is not very valid, and if you really want to confirm it, you have to go through the websites of individual ministries, subsidy programs, go through the final reports of companies, and so on. Requests for information helped us a lot. But I think it's not that difficult to create a tool that would fulfill this function, and it would be more democratic, more transparent, and people would know what public funds are being used for. Yes, that would make sense. And as far as Europe is concerned, we found that in France, for example, it is very difficult to access information, which was confirmed to me by researchers from other organizations. That in France, for example, it is really very complicated. In Italy, on the other hand, it was much easier, which was surprising.

There are varying degrees of quality. It is very difficult to compare this information, but I think that nowadays it would not be difficult to create a tool that would allow these analyses to be done really quickly, perhaps within a week or so. I worked on it for three months.

Albín Sybera: We are running out of time, but I would still like to ask one last question. Could we conclude with a bit of philosophy? Would you like to comment in some way on the development and activities of the EP Group and Sev.en Group, how you perceive them not only in the context of the Czech Republic, but perhaps also globally? And I would say that in the context of the last thirty years in the Czech Republic, it seems to me a little bit as if we have moved somewhere from state socialism to state capitalism, but on the other hand, it is probably necessary to perceive that even in the world, large corporations are getting into politics or, respectively, expanding their influence into AA politics. In this way, they are able to influence political decisions.

Radek Kubala: I think that's the key question today. There are democracies with oligarchies, with such influential groups that are able to turn the rules to their advantage, able to essentially turn the key money channels to themselves. This is exactly what it proves. We have subsidy programs, such as the Modernization Fund, which are supposed to serve some ideal of democratizing the energy sector. To restore health, to reduce emissions. But the big companies are able to hijack the process so that they can suck most of it out for themselves. So, in my opinion, this is the key issue today, and it is a dispute that I think defines the present era, even though it is often not described that way in the political arena, because the struggle looks like a dispute between the nationalist far right and some kind of liberal practice, but that is not the case. Behind both groups are oligarchs, just of a different type. And in reality, the dispute of our future is between civil society and democracy on the one hand and oligarchy on the other.

Albín Sybera: Thank you very much, and I look forward to continuing our conversation. Goodbye.