Prague, June 8 (CTK) – The Czech and Slovak Prime ministers, Bohuslav Sobotka (Social Democrats, CSSD) and Robert Fico (Smer-Social Democracy), plan a joint meeting of both countries’ governments to be held in September, they told reporters after their meeting in Prague yesterday.
This is Fico’s first official foreign visit after his re-appointment as head of government in March.
Moreover, Sobotka and Fico want to hold joint talks with their Austrian counterpart in July.
“We have agreed to be striving for a meeting of the Czech and Slovak cabinets in September. We will be working on a joint agenda until then,” Sobotka told reporters.
Fico said the inter-governmental meeting will deal with particular forms of cooperation.
Both PMs would also like to focus on the celebrations of statehood.
Sobotka said both countries should intensively cooperate on the preparations of the 2018 joint celebrations of the 100-year anniversary of the foundation of Czechoslovakia (1918) and 50 years of the 1968 Prague Spring reform movement that was crushed by the Soviet-led invasion.
“We want to focus on the joint celebrations,” Fico added.
Sobotka also called the upgrading of the railway network a priority.
“We want to build the routes Prague-Berlin and Prague-Brno- Bratislava,” he said, adding that Slovakia must increase the capacity of rail connection from the border in Breclav, south Moravia, to Bratislava in this respect.
Fico can see the major potential for the development of Czech-Slovak cooperation in the energy industry.
Sobotka thanked Fico for following the tradition of paying the first foreign visit after his appointment as PM to the Czech Republic.
Fico was originally to visit Prague in April, but he was hospitalised with heart troubles in the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases in Bratislava where he was operated on later.
After their talks, Fico and Sobotka left for the Prague European Summit international forum, held in the Czech capital since Monday.
The other two prime ministers of the Visegrad Four (V4) countries, Viktor Orban (Hungary) and Beata Szydlo (Poland), will join them at the forum. They all will hold talks within a summit of the V4 group later yesterday. On this occasion, the Czech Republic will symbolically hand over the V4 presidency to Poland.
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