Region: Radičová visits Prague

In Prague on an official visit Oct. 18, Slovak Prime Minister Iveta Radičová met with her Czech counterpart, the Civic Democrats' (ODS) Petr Nečas. At the top of the agenda were state budget policies and the European Union summit slated for later this month.

Both Nečas, who is the leader of a three-party right-of-center coalition elected in May, and Radičová, who has been the leader of a similar Slovak coalition government since she ran for the right-of-center Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKU-DS) in the June general elections, advocate the implementation of strict austerity measures and call for fiscal responsibility among all EU governments.

Upon meeting in Prague, the two prime ministers agreed that EU criteria in judging member states' budget deficits should be more objective and take into account expenses aspiring eurozone members may have in introducing the new currency. Nečas and Radičová had already discussed the issue during Nečas' visit to Bratislava in July, his first trip abroad after he became prime minister. Both leaders believe that measures need to be introduced to make EU rules for budget policies enforceable.

However, Nečas and Radičová disagree on the specifics of how these rules should be enforced, a fact that the Slovak prime minister attributed to the countries' different standings within the EU.

"Slovakia is a member of the eurozone, so our commitment is a different one. We advocate clear criteria for assessing each member state and the creation of a system of sanctions for those countries that break the rules," she said.

One such sanction could be to strip budget offenders of their voting rights within the EU, a step the Czech Republic does not support. The Czech prime minister was nonetheless quick to stress that the two countries are mostly on the same page.

"Our meeting once again confirmed how similar the Czech and Slovak governments are in their opinions," Nečas said.

Relations between the two countries have been excellent, and at their meeting in July, Nečas and Radičová even discussed the possibility of holding joint government meetings. Both countries' interior political situations are comparable, with the Slovak government introducing austerity measures that were met with protests from thousands of labor union members in October, just weeks after unions in the Czech Republic similarly took to the streets, protesting the government's planned budget cuts. Radičová's government met with public protests after it approved an increase of value-added tax on food and other products along with increasing consumer taxes in an effort to reduce Slovakia's state budget deficit, threatening to reach 8 percent of GDP by the end of 2010. Meanwhile, Nečas' government has come under fire for a number of austerity measures, including a planned 10 percent cut to the public wage budget next year.

At their Oct. 18 meeting, Nečas and Radičová also reached agreement on a number of other points, including a joint strategy for the upcoming EU summit Oct. 28-29 in Brussels. Slovakia is currently presiding over the Visegrád Group (V4) that unites four Central European states: the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland. Slovakia is the only member of the alliance to have already adopted the euro currency.

Radičová was also received by President Václav Klaus and met with Senate Chairman Přemysl Sobotka (ODS) as well as the chairman of the lower house, Miroslava Němcová (ODS).

Sarah Borufka can be reached at
sborufka@praguepost.com