Current Affairs Government close to finalising main priorities
The country’s new prime minister, Jan Fischer, has revealed that his government is now close to releasing its official policy statement, with the government due to hammer out final details this week. Regardless, two major focuses of the new government are already obvious: preparing a tight state budget for 2010, and successfully completing the Czech EU presidency.
Unions demonstration in Prague, photo: CTK
Prime Minister Jan Fischer’s government has until June 8 to ask the lower
house for approval in a confidence vote and on Monday revealed his cabinet
is now close to agreement on priorities. While details remain to be
finalised, this much is clear: first, the cabinet aims to complete the
Czech presidency of the European Union on a high note, after it was
more-or-less hamstringed by the fall of the previous government; second, it
aims to reel in government spending.
Jan Fischer, photo: CTK
The new Finance Minister Eduard Janota, for example, has proposed lowering
ministerial budgets by 10 percent with the sole exception being the
Ministry of Defence. Expected are cuts in subsidies as well as a pay freeze
in the public sector which would affect workers across the board, from
civil servants to teachers, doctors and others: all in the face of the
current economic crisis. On Saturday, in a major demonstration in Prague
unions and union members expressed concern over the treatment of employees
in the wake of the crisis; on the other hand, the government has little
room to manoeuvre: even after savings measures are introduced, the prime
minister has said it will be extremely difficult to keep next year’s
state deficit within the targeted 150 billion crown limit.
The two largest parties in Parliament, the right-of-centre Civic Democrats
and the opposition Social Democrats - who paved the way for Jan Fischer’s
caretaker government - will now also negotiate with the prime minister
before priorities in the programme are finalised. So far, it appears only
the opposition Social Democrats are taking issue on a number of points, the
most outstanding being a plan by the new prime minister to push ahead with
the privatisation of Prague Airport. The Social Democrats have already
threatened if the government insists on pushing ahead with that project it
will not get their support in the upcoming confidence vote. It is not clear
if the party would really go ahead with its threat – seen largely as
pre-election rhetoric - as even if the current cabinet failed the upcoming
confidence vote, it would remain in power until early elections.
