Slovak Support of Joint V4 Tripartite Sessions

The tripartites of Slovakia and the Czech Republic held a joint session in Bratislava on Monday. Their representatives agreed that the co-operation in the social sphere should be deepened. Slovak Premier Robert Fico supported the idea that emerged at the meeting to organise a joint session of the tripartites of the entire Visegrad Four - apart from Slovakia and the Czech Republic also of Poland and Hungary. According to him, social dialogue isn't a socialist relic. "If complex economic, social and financial decisions are taken without quality social dialogue and a critical mass of opinions, such measures don't have internal quality," said Robert Fico. One of the topics discussed was the issue of the minimum wage. Czech Premier Bohuslav Sobotka said that the Czech rightist governments hadn't increased the minimum salary for six years. This has resulted in a situation that while the minimum wage will make 43 percent of the average salary as of January in Slovakia, it's going to be only 36 percent in the Czech Republic. Following a failure to reach an agreement on the minimum wage within the Slovak tripartite, the Government will present its own proposal. "I think that it will be around €400 [per month], or even more. It's an issue of agreement by the entire Government," said Slovak Labour Minister Ján Richter. As he added, minimum wage hikes in the past didn't result in lay-offs. "Quite the contrary - we've managed to [contribute towards] the creation of 110,000 new jobs, while unemployment has fallen by 60,000 in the past three years. So the minimum wage hike has had an opposite effect," added Richter.