Pres. Petr Pavel is widely expected to announce tomorrow that he will sign the 2025 national budget, despite the objections he and his adviser had expressed publicly to it. A veto, should he in the end decide for one, would send the budget back to the lower chamber of Parliament, where the ruling coalition has a majority of 104+1 (the 105th vote being Ivo Vondrák's, an independent). When MPs gave their final approval to the budget bill on Dec. 3 with a vote of 97-90, eight coalition lawmakers were either excused (7) or abstained (1), but it didn't matter, because a simple majority was needed. An override of a presidential veto would require the votes of 101 MPs, which would be a true vote of confidence in the government of PM Petr Fiala. That probably won't be needed, so the closest thing to a new confidence vote in the government will be the approval of the budget by 97 MPs on Dec. 3 and the president's signature this week. Perhaps most important, it's a confidence vote in the idea that large budget deficits with no end in sight don't really matter, which has in effect become one of the fundamental values of Western civilization.