TOP 09 to push for lowering budget deficit by 1 percent of GDP annually

Assuming it does well in next year’s election, the country’s newest political party TOP 09, which elected members of its party leadership on Saturday, has outlined as key the need to reduce the state budget deficit by 1 percent GDP per year. Speaking on Czech TV on Sunday, the newly-confirmed party chairman Karel Schwarzenberg said such a move would stabilise public finances within five years, allowing the country to adopt the euro in 2015. Mr Schwarzenberg stressed that Czech adoption of the European currency was a pragmatic decision for his party, rather than an ideological one. The former foreign minister, who is 71, won 99 percent of party delegates’ votes on Saturday; other key members elected to the leadership include the former finance minister Miroslav Kalousek.