PRAGUE, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Tomas Chalupa, a Prague district mayor, was nominated as Czech environment minister on Monday to replace a predecessor forced to leave amid a scandal that threatened to overthrow the government last month.
The incident struck just as the three-party administration planned to agree on key pension, healthcare and tax reforms of its four-year term which started in mid-2010.
Prime Minister Patr Necas told a news conference he would recommend the 36-year-old member of his centre-right Civic Democrats for formal appointment by President Vaclav Klaus.
"I expect from him the continuation of a non-ideological, non-dogmatic approach (to environment policy)," Necas said.
Drobil was forced to quit last month after accusations that his advisor put pressure on a senior civic servant at the ministry to skew selection of suppliers.
Drobil denied any wrongdoing but the affair sparked a row within the coalition which threatened to sink the centre-right cabinet in a no-confidence vote initiated by the opposition.
A junior coalition partner, the centrist Public Affairs, hesitated with their support for the cabinet. The row was settled hours before the vote at a meeting of coalition chiefs with President Klaus, but it raised worries about the parties' ability to find agreement on the key reforms.
The Civic Democrats are sceptical towards efforts to halt global warming and they support nuclear energy.
The country's main power utility, CEZ <CEZPsp.PR>, has opened a tender to build two new units at its Temelin nuclear plant, and possibly others in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The government has taken steps to halt a boom in the solar industry, boosted by generous feed-in tariffs set in the past.
The cabinet will also address an environmental clean-up tender worth possibly billions of dollars in the coming weeks.
The tender has sparked tensions in the coalition, with Necas saying that possibly no winner will be picked. (Reporting by Jan Lopatka; Editing by Jason Neely)
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