The visit by the Czech Republic's Chamber of Deputies Speaker Tomio Okamura to Slovakia serves as a restart of Czech-Slovak relations, said Slovak House Chair Richard Raši (Hlas-SD) following his meeting with Okamura at Bratislava Castle on Tuesday.
Raši believes that the two countries' parliaments will be the driving force for resuming talks between Slovakia and the Czech Republic at both the official and unofficial levels.
This is Okamura's first foreign visit as speaker of the Chamber of Deputies.
According to Raši, the Czech Republic and Slovakia want to address some challenges jointly and will coordinate at the European level in order have similar statements and positions on issues such as migration, ETS2 emission allowances, the ban on combustion engines after 2035, and the preparation of the multi-annual financial framework and EU funds. "So that we can fight together for the EU fund policy, which is important for developing our countries, and also set it up with other partners from the Visegrad Four [Hungary and Poland], so that it will be as beneficial as possible," said Raši.
Expanding cooperation at the presidential, parliamentary and governmental levels and restoring above-standard relations between the two countries dominated the meeting between President Peter Pellegrini and Okamura at the Presidential Palace.
According to the head of state, there's a need to focus primarily on issues that unite countries and on which they have common priorities. In the case of Slovakia and the Czech Republic, these include, for example, opposition to the ban on combustion engines, a similar stance on migration, joint support for agriculture and farmers, and an identical position on the priorities of the European budget.
No political calculation can jeopardize the valuable Slovak-Czech relations, stated Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD) following his meeting with Tomio Okamura.
"I'm very pleased that today I had the opportunity to meet in person with the new chairman of the Czech Republic's Chamber of Deputies, Tomio Okamura, and his parliamentary delegation representing the new governing coalition. It was a wonderful meeting full of understanding and mutual respect," said Fico, adding that he once again sees the prospect of joint negotiations between the governments of Slovakia and the Czech Republic and, above all, of restoring the power of the V4, which, according to him, can change European issues if it moves up a gear.
Parties likely to form the future Czech opposition have criticized Okamura for traveling to Slovakia only with MPs of the emerging coalition, representatives of the parties told an extraordinary press conference on Tuesday.
According to them, this is the first time this has ever happened, and they've therefore decided to organize their own trip. Next week, they plan to meet the opposition in Slovakia, and they also want to ask Parliamentary Chair Richard Raši for a meeting.
"We've decided to respond to Mr. Okamura's trip to Slovakia, which is taking place significantly and exclusively on the basis of the emerging governing coalition and, furthermore, in a situation in which the current government is being quite heavily slandered there. We consider this to be a bad and wrong decision ... So, we've decided that ... we'll travel to Slovakia next week to try to meet the Slovak opposition and ask Mr. Raši to receive us. We'll see what his reaction will be," announced chairman of the ODS parliamentary caucus Marek Benda.
Source: TASR
