Bohuslav Sobotka

Bohuslav Sobotka (born October 23 October 1971) is a Czech politician and lawyer who served as the prime minister of the Czech Republic from January 2014 to December 2017 and Leader of the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) from 2010 until his resignation in June 2017.

He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies (MP) from 1996 to 2018.

Sobotka was first elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1996.

Sobotka also served as minister of Finance from 2002 to 2006.

After the formation of the Cabinet of Vladimír Špidla in 2002, Sobotka was appointed Finance Minister and then in 2003, he was promoted to the position of the Deputy Prime Minister, reappointed Finance Minister in both cabinets of Social Democratic Prime Ministers Stanislav Gross and Jiří Paroubek.

From 2002 to 2006, he was Finance Minister of the Czech Republic.

Sobotka was also a Deputy Prime Minister from 2003 to 2004 and from 2005 to 2006.

As the minister of finance, Sobotka formed an advisory body of economists, which later became the National Economic Council of the Czech government.

His austerity policy included the dismissal of employees and restrictions on savings accounts and health benefits, a policy he later criticized.

In 2005, he was appointed the First Deputy Prime Minister in Paroubek's government.

When Jiří Paroubek became the new prime minister in 2005, Sobotka reduced his restrictions which led to an increase in the deficit.

After the 2006 legislative election, Sobotka became an opposition MP, and in 2011, he was elected as the Leader of the Social Democrats, and thus stood as the Leader of the Opposition to the Cabinet of Petr Nečas.

Sobotka was elected to the chamber again in 2006 but his party lost the election and went into opposition.

Sobotka became Minister of Finance in a shadow cabinet of Social Democrats.

He also briefly served as interim chairman in 2006, after the resignation of Stanislav Gross.

His party won legislative election in 2010 but failed to form a governing coalition and remained in opposition.

Sobotka then served as interim leader of ČSSD after the resignation of Jiří Paroubek following the election.

Sobotka was elected chairman of the party on March 18, 2011, when he defeated Michal Hašek who became the first deputy chairman.

On March 18, 2011, Sobotka was officially elected the party chairman.

His cabinet consisted of members of the coalition government – the ČSSD, ANO 2011, and Christian and Democratic Union–Czechoslovak People's Party.

He was the 11th Prime Minister of the Czech Republic and the 1st left-wing Prime Minister after 6 years of right-wing political control in the Czech Republic.

Sobotka's government coalition had in the Chamber of Deputies 111 seats out of 200 and his ČSSD had 50 seats.

Bohuslav Sobotka's views on the Czech Republic's membership in the European Union as prime minister were relatively positive.

Sobotka led his party in the legislative elections of 2013.

The party won the election, gaining 20.45% of votes.

The formation of a new government was marked by a conflict between Bohuslav Sobotka and Michal Hašek who, along with his allies from the Party, attended a secret post-election meeting with the Czech President Miloš Zeman.

They called on Sobotka to resign due to the party's poor election result.

Hašek and his allies also eliminated Sobotka from the team negotiating the next government.

The secret meeting was later revealed, and Hašek was accused of publicly lying about it.

It led to public protests in the country in support of Sobotka, which in turn led to Hašek's retreat and new government-coalition negotiations led by Sobotka.

Following the 2013 Czech legislative election, Sobotka was appointed prime minister on January 17, 2014, by the President and twelve days later, he formed a center-left Coalition Government consisting of SSD, ANO 2011 and KDU-ČSL.

His government introduced a series of measures aimed at tackling tax evasion, such as electronic registration of sales or a VAT control system, strengthened relations with China, reformed the police, repealed the Civil Service Act, and enforced the smoking ban.

Sobotka was designated as prime minister on January 17, 2014, and appointed, alongside his cabinet, by President Miloš Zeman on January 29, 2014.

He also frequently clashed with President Miloš Zeman regarding the Russian intervention in Ukraine and resulting sanctions, domestic policy and Sobotka's withdrawn resignation in May 2017.

Sobotka is the first prime minister in 15 years and the third in the history of the Czech Republic to finish his full term.

On June 14, 2017, Sobotka announced his resignation as Leader of ČSSD due to low opinion polling prior to the 2017 legislative election but opted to stay on as prime minister, and he was re-elected MP in his South Moravia and in December 2017 was succeeded by Andrej Babiš.

After leading his party for some seven years, Bohuslav Sobotka resigned on June 14, 2017 as the Leader of the Social Democratic Party after some opinion polls showed his party with a support of 10%, saying that "the party has to undergo deeper changes so that it will be able to better address people and mobilize its supporters and members” ahead of the 2017 legislative election. However, Sobotka decided to compete in the election as the leader of the party in the South Moravian Region. After his resignation, Minister of Interior Milan Chovanec assumed the position of acting leader of the ČSSD, while Minister of Foreign Affairs Lubomír Zaorálek became the party candidate for Prime Minister.

On March 31 March 2018, Sobotka retired from the Chamber of Deputies citing personal reasons.

Sobotka was born in Telnice, but moved with his family to Slavkov u Brna.

He received a Master's degree in law at Masaryk University.