Current Affairs Czech Foreign Ministry closes embassies to cut costs

The Czech consulate in Montreal “At the end of September, we plan to close our embassy to Colombia in Bogotá, and also our consulate general in Sydney. But at the same time, I must say that the date was set to late September because after the elections [in May], we will have a full-fledged political government, and it will have enough time to look at the issue and either confirm or cancel the solution.”

How do you decide which embassies and consulates? What are the criteria?

“There are many criteria that would take a long time to sum up. But we generally consider the financial, political and security aspects; the historical relations with that country; comparison with other EU countries in the area; whether we can cover the relation from another Czech embassy which is near or far away; how many accreditations there are for that embassy… So these would be the basic criteria but there are probably dozens more.”

Hynek Kmoníček There have been complaints about some of the steps; for instance, the opposition in Zimbabwe was reportedly unhappy about the closing down of Czech embassy because it was a beacon of support for human rights and humanitarian aid in the country. Do you take these issues into consideration when planning which embassies will close?

“We do take these issues very much into consideration and that’s why the embassy in Harare was supposed to close down, but we haven’t yet decided about the date, and I didn’t even name it among the embassies which will close by the end of September. So it’s certain the embassy will remain there until the end of the year, and if there is a decision by the new government based on the concerns you just mentioned, it will stay there even further.”

The foreign ministry also decided to close the Czech Centre in Dresden, Germany. Are you going to streamline the network of these cultural centres as well?

The Czech Centre in Dresden “Yes, we are. But we are doing the same with the embassies. Whenever we close an embassy, it doesn’t mean we vacate the area and just end our activities with no replacement. What we try to do, and we have already started, is to stay in places where there was a Czech embassy and the building is still there, and establish a consulate general in the form of the Visegrád House. The four Visegrád countries [the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary] pool their financial and technical means and help each other to continue their presence there in a very economical way.”