According to the Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic, Juraj Blanár, the new Czech government cares about building relations with Slovakia. According to him, a clear message is the Tuesday visit of the Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs, Petr Macinka, to Bratislava, where he arrived the very next day after his appointment to the position.
Macinka declared that he wanted to continue where the countries stopped cooperating. At the same time, he noted that The Czech Republic will always have its opinion, which it will promote, regardless of what Slovakia’s opinion is.
The head of Czech diplomacy explained that he made the trip to Slovakia so soon after his appointment because he is traveling to Brussels on Wednesday and under no circumstances did he want his first trip in office to lead anywhere other than Slovakia. “For the past few years, I have been troubled by the fact that the relations between the Czech and Slovak governments cooled a little due to the initiative of the Czech government.
In Czech society, I always perceive that nothing like that has happened between people… I’m really glad that now this discrepancy has been removed. We will be happy to cooperate and we will pick up where the cooperation left off,” said Macinka.
He did not answer directly to the question of whether the Czech Republic will also promote a policy on the four sides of the world. He only stated that the Czech government’s priority will be to place much greater emphasis on relations with its closest neighbors, to strengthen the self-confidence of the Czech representation in the EU field and to return more to diplomacy and limit PR. Blanár responded that EU countries are still sovereign states and it is their duty to promote national interests. “I am glad that the Czech government is equally aware that the priorities of the Czech Republic come first,” he added.
To the question of whether the Czech Republic will side with Slovakia’s opinion on the war in Ukraine, support for Kyiv or anti-Russian sanctions, Macinka responded that the Czech government will promote the Czech opinion regardless of what the opinion of the Slovak Republic or other countries will be.
According to Blanár, the Slovak government shared 95 percent of the same views on the conflict in Ukraine with Petr Fiala’s cabinet, and they only differed on how to resolve the war. “From the beginning, we have been saying… that the war has no military solution, while the previous Czech government felt that it could be solved militarily. We advocated a peaceful solution… The Ukrainians understood this and had joint negotiations with us three times, in contrast to Mr. Fiala’s government canceling the joint negotiations of the governments,” Blanár pointed out.
The new head of Czech diplomacy has announced that soon Prime Minister Andrej Babiš will also travel to Slovakia for his first official foreign visit. It is said to be a “big trip”, but he did not want to give further details. He invited Blanár to visit Prague.
