Macinka: The demolition of the Czech pavilion for Expo 2025 in Japan will start on August 1

The demolition of the Czech pavilion built for the World Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan, will begin on August 1 and will last several months, at least until November. This was announced to journalists today in Zagreb by Foreign Minister Petr Macinka. The demolition will be carried out by a Japanese company that won the tender. According to Macinka, the firm has experience with similar projects, as it participated in the installation and dismantling of several other pavilions. Macinka did not specify the cost, but the expenses will be lower than originally expected, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will save several million crowns, he added.

At the end of June, Macinka stated that there are no interested buyers for the Czech pavilion, and the only economical option is its demolition. Funds originally allocated for the purchase of a new building for the embassy in Kyiv will be used for outstanding liabilities as well as for the demolition itself.

The project for Czech participation in Expo 2025 has, according to earlier statements by the minister, exceeded the originally set budget of 290 million crowns to more than 600 million, for which he repeatedly criticized the previous Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský (ODS) and the former chief commissioner of the Czech participation in the exhibition, Ondřej Soška. Both rejected the criticism, with Soška stating that the budget had not been exceeded. According to him, the concept of participation anticipated a budget of around 500 million crowns, which included funds not only from the state budget but also from regions, institutions, or companies.

Initially, the cabinet allocated 290 million crowns for financing the Czech participation in Expo 2025. In July last year, the then-government of Petr Fiala (ODS) approved an increase of up to an additional 120 million crowns from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' budget, thus providing a total of 410 million. An additional 150 to 210 million was planned to be secured from external sources, such as private companies.

In early July, Soška also objected to the criticism of the Czech pavilion itself, which according to Macinka has no interested buyers, and the most economical option is its demolition. The total cost of the pavilion, according to Soška, rose to 248 million crowns, while the residual value was estimated at around 90 million. "That is why we sought the sale of the entire pavilion so that it could continue to serve the public, similarly to part of the pavilion from Expo 1958 in Prague's Letná," he wrote. Towards the end of Soška's term, according to him, there were concrete interested parties from both the public and private sectors, and since April, Czech Centers and the ministry have been discussing the fate of the pavilion. "The claim that 'no interested party exists' is fundamentally different from saying 'we cannot agree on the terms,'" he stated.

Expo 2025 took place from April 13 to October 13 on the artificial island of Jumejima in Osaka. The Czech national pavilion was built by the Japanese company Daisue. During the duration of the exhibition, more than one and a half million people visited it.