Speech of the Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek in the Pantheon of the National Museum in Prague Delivered on 29th April 2008

Thirty years ago, another Prime Minister inaugurated here the north-south trunk-road. I am greatly honoured to announce that we will remove it from this locality in a foreseeable future. Thirty years ago, the mayor of Prague boasted here of fulfilling the socialist target and to meet conclusions of the 15th Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The mayor of today would certainly agree that there was nothing to boast of.

To intersect a natural and the most famous Prague boulevard by a motorway, to separate the National Museum from it – it was a crime. It was a crime which we must rectify. The Museum simply belongs to the Wenceslas square. What does not belong to it is the four-line motorway. When handing over to the National Museum the building of the nearby former Federal Assembly at a ceremony on 1st December 2006, I definitely did not expect that the two buildings would remain for ever as two islands amidst streams of cars. And they will not do so. Now, there is a chance how to renew the integrity of the Wenceslas square, and concurrently to join the historical building of the National Museum with former National Assembly building.

The memorandum on the joint proceedings by the Czech government, the Capital City of Prague, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Culture will enable the centre of our capital to serve its inhabitants and visitors to the full once again. It will enable the transport to be hidden in a tunnel and to make way for people, so that this space could be a place where people live, not just pass, as it had been centuries before. I believe that people will appreciate this agreement, and I do not mean only Prague citizens but also Czechs and foreigners coming to this city on the Vltava River just because of the unique atmosphere, for its cultural and historical character, which is better preserved then in case of other European and world metropolises. Prime Ministers and Mayors sometimes have ambitions to leave behind in a capital something new, a new building or even a district. I am more modest, we are more modest. I will be satisfied if - also thanks to my cabinet – something disappears: namely the north-south trunk-road separating the National Museum and the Wenceslas square.