Prague, Jan 26 (CTK) – Some new legislation, a rising budget and more emphasis on defence and the military were the biggest successes of the Czech Defence Ministry in the past two years, Defence Minister Martin Stropnicky (ANO) said yesterday.
The opposition has criticised him for a slow increase in defence spending, frequent public procurement without tenders and a sluggish legislative process.
However, both sides stress a constructive cooperation between the coalition government and the opposition in the military area, unlike other spheres.
Stropnicky, who became a member of the centre-left coalition government in January 2014, said the perception of the importance of defence had changed during his tenure.
“When I was taking up the office in 2014, it was strongly underfinanced, almost in a state of misery, when it comes to its budget,” Stropnicky has told CTK.
He said the planned increase of four to five billion crowns a year was a good beginning.
The opposition says the increase was insufficient, taking into account the bad security situation in the world.
Marek Zenisek, Chamber of Deputies member for the conservative opposition TOP 09, said the coalition government was giving its hands off the promised rise in the defence budget to 1.4 percent of GDP by 2020.
If the figure were to be achieved, the budget would have to be increased by ten billion crowns a year until the end of the decade.
The enactment of important legislation that gave the military a career order, introduced the training of volunteers and increased the attractiveness of the active reserves were also successes in the sphere of defence, coalition government senior officials say.
“In two years, we have managed to fulfil the legislative plan for which the Defence Ministry was responsible,” Bohuslav Chalupa (ANO) said.
Jana Cernochova (opposition Civic Democratic Party, ODS) said she welcomed the legislation, but it ought to have been passed some 18 months ago.
The Czech military has been enjoying a high degree of popularity for a long time.
In the past two years, it attracted public attention by its plans for upgrading, costing billions of crowns, and participation in foreign missions, especially in Afghanistan.
In the summer of 2014, a suicide attack in Afghanistan claimed the lives of five Czech soldiers.
A big interest was also aroused by the passage of a U.S. military convoy across the Czech Republic from an exercise in the Baltics in late March 2015. At first, primarily pro-Russian associations protested against it, but the U.S. troops were eventually only welcomed by their ardent fans.
Allied cooperation and the fulfilment of allied duties is another success of the Czech military in the past period, Stropnicky said.
He has dismissed the notion that the Czech Republic was a sort of dodger in NATO.
He stressed the work of Czech military pilots who rapidly replaced their Canadian counterparts, who were relocated to a NATO operation against Islamic State, and took up the policing of the airspace over Iceland last summer.
“If need be, we are ready to increase our numbers and we are able to react flexibly to the demand that is in the alliance,” Stropnicky said.
He stressed the recent approval of the military blueprint until 2025 and the closure of the Brdy military training ground and the reduced area of others.
Stropnicky conceded that the ministry and the military were still not “quite flexible and fast” in the procurement.
“I prefer to be rather slow, but with the guarantee that everything is in order,” Stropnicky said.
Defence Ministry officials have been repeatedly suspected of corruption and overpricing in the purchase of military materiel.
The procurement system was criticised by Cernochova. She said the direct ordering of acquisitions had become widespread recently at the Defence Ministry.
Stropnicky has dismissed the allegation. He said the military should not buy any lorries or automatic rifles abroad if it could get high quality ones in the Czech Republic.
($1=24.980 crowns)
