The rightwing coalition in Prague is to face a vote of confidence in parliament on Friday in the latest survival test facing governments across Europe as they struggle to stay in office in the age of austerity.
The three-party government of the prime minister, Petr Necas, is hanging on by the most slender of margins, battered by large street protests over spending cuts, tax increases, job losses and corruption, and the splintering of his smallest coalition partner, after less than two years in power.
Last weekend about 100,000 demonstrators marched to demand the government's resignation in the biggest street scenes since the rallies that brought down communism at the end of 1989. At the same time, the centre-right coalition in the Netherlands collapsed over its failure to agree on swingeing budget cuts, while Nicolas Sarkozy also lost the first round of France's presidential election.
Although the Czech Republic is not part of the eurozone, the 17 EU countries sharing the single currency, the EU's strict new fiscal regime is behind Necas's predicament. He needs a majority to survive and to push through pension reforms, spending cuts, VAT rises and public sector job cuts to meet the EU's budget deficit targets by next year.
His 115-seat majority in the 200-seat parliament has been reduced to at most 103 by the breakup of Public Affairs, his smallest coalition partner. It entered parliament in 2010 after winning support for its anti-sleaze campaign, but one of its leaders was recently convicted on bribery charges.
Necas's three-seat margin looks precarious because two of his supporters are also being investigated by police on corruption allegations and the police have requested the lifting of parliamentary immunity for one of the suspects.
If the Czech government falls, it will be the 10th EU government to fall during two years of single currency turbulence and sovereign debt crisis. The nine administrations which have already collapsed do not include Germany or France, where the euro crisis has also taken its toll – in France last Sunday and in a string of regional elections in Germany that have weakened the chancellor, Angela Merkel, and hammered her liberal FDP coalition partner in Berlin.
