Wisla, Poland, Dec 12 (special CTK correspondent) – Czechs and Poles will create a team for making a section of the Oder River navigable, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said after a meeting with his Polish counterpart Beata Szydlo and added that the project is prospective.
The Oder River rises in the Czech Republic, flows through western Poland and later forms 187 kilometres of the Polish-German border. It empties into the Baltic Sea.
The river is to be made navigable between Ostrava, north Moravia, and Kozle, Poland.
The Czech Republic and Poland want to seek European money for interconnecting the Czech D11 motorway and the S3 Polish expressway in the east of Bohemia, Sobotka said.
He said he told Szydlo that the government is trying to accelerate work on the construction of the motorway section leading from Hradec Kralove, east Bohemia, to the Polish border.
Szydlo told journalists that she and Sobotka agreed on the need to improve infrastructure on both sides of the joint border.
Sobotka presented the Czech “boiler subsidies” programme within which the state contributes to the replacement of old boilers in households.
He said the Czechs will welcome every investment improving the air. “This is of great interest to both Czechs and Poles on the two sides of the joint border,” Sobotka said.
He and Szydlo also spoke about the planned extension of the Turow lignite mine, which is situated close to the Czech border.
Sobotka said the Czech Republic will demand documentation on the project in order to be able to join the assessment of the project’s impact on the environment.
He singled out as a problem the maintenance of the ground water level. “We would like to avert possible negative impacts,” he said.
Sobotka and Szydlo discussed a plan for a new police cooperation treaty that would make it possible to launch cross-border police intervention.
Sobotka said the agreement is important in the struggle against pervitin (methamphetamine) makers and distributors.
The valid police cooperation treaty is ten years old.
The Czech-German treaty, which took effect in October, may be a model for the agreement with Poland.
Under the Czech-German agreement, police of the neighbouring country can quickly intervene on the territory of the other state without its previous agreement in emergency cases, such as an immediate threat to life, within a ten-kilometre band of the joint border.
Szydlo praised the Czech support for the Polish candidature for an elected U.N. Security Council member.
She said Poland and the Czech Republic will continue cooperating in culture and exchanging experience.
Sobotka said Monday’s talks in Wisla, which is situated close to the Czech border, were good and useful.
