Prime minister presents members of new body to combat effects of financial crisis
While we are still waiting for a long-promised cabinet reshuffle, the Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolánek, has delivered on his pledge to set up a National Economic Council to discuss ways of combatting the effects of the global financial crisis. On Thursday morning, the prime minister presented the 10 leading economists who will serve on the new body; they include such people as mid 1990s industry minister Vladimír Dlouhý, the president of the Czech Banking Association, Jiří Kunert, and Tomáš Sedláček of ČSOB bank. At its launch, Sedláček (31) told me about the thinking behind the new national economic council.
“What’s important is that this crisis is a global crisis which has hit the whole world, which in a way is good news, because the whole world is coming together. We’re trying to co-operate globally, not only as Europeans, but as a whole civilisation.
“The whole globe is coming together and in a similar manner Czech experts from all kinds of different schools of thought are coming together with one single intention – to help the Czech economy, to ease the negative influence that is being imported from abroad.”
The prime minister is heading this council himself. How much will you be his advisors, and how much will your own opinions as individuals carry weight within this council?
“We have talked about this. Of course the purpose is to have different opinions. I suppose there is no point in the prime minister summoning a party of his own friends with the same opinions that he already has.
“The whole purpose of this exercise is to have a variety of opinion, so we are all, of course, encouraged to have our own opinions and advocate them in this group of 10. The opinions that will win or conquer over the others, be it from any political school, will prevail.
“So far the meetings we’ve had, on different councils but with similar people, were surprisingly consensual. I think it is much easier to find a consensus within a group of economists than among a group of politicians.”
Do you know today how long this council will be in existence?
“This is not known to us. We are ready to serve the government as long as necessary, and as short as necessary.”
How bad do things look for the Czech economy over the next year or so?
“Well, considering the surrounding world, our situation should be much better than abroad. Our slowdown of GDP should be much softer, smoother, we shouldn’t have such a dramatic slowdown. Our increase in unemployment will be not as large as what we see in America or other countries of the European Union.
“We’ve survived the first blow, so to speak, we have not been severely affected by the first wave of the financial crisis, we will be affected by the second wave – that is, the general macro-economic slowdown.
“But because of the original inertia that we have from the first wave, we’re better equipped to also have fewer, so to speak, harms and bruises from this general slowdown.”
