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.