Speech of the Prime Minister of the CR, Mirek Topolánek in the campus of the Masaryk University in Brno on 2nd March 2007

It is spoken a lot about education, science and research. Perhaps more than you would wish – because the more is spoken the less is done. I do not want to be entangled in complicated compound sentences and to seek for poetic names for matters that we must do. I like to stick to tried terms and I do not like to invent new ones.
For the entire package of changes, which we need to carry out in the sphere of education, in science and research support, and consequently in the whole society, there exists one good old word: modernization. I am aware of a seeming paradox. Modernization is a really old problem.
If it were not integration of the new interpretation of the world directly in fundamentals of our culture by our ancestors, Europe would not be where it is now.
Ceaseless march forward, innovations and changes, it is a new trend of last decades or centuries. It is our thousand-year-old tradition. A tradition, which sets science and scientific thinking higher in our culture than it is in some other civilizations. Let us hold this tradition.
How does my government want to hold this tradition? It is perhaps what you are interested in. I delivered a long speech last week on the occasion of the conference of chancellors, which summarized the principal reform steps prepared. I do not want to repeat them here and therefore I will just briefly summarize what our objectives are.
Our objective is to open universities for all who are interested and who have preconditions for study. Our objective is to get more financial means in the sphere of science and research than it is nowadays, not only from public but also from private resources. Our objective is far more intensive connection of science with practice.
Nowadays, we are preparing a detailed plan of further steps, so that we would be able to present clear concept of concrete tasks before the one-hundred-day close season of our government expires. It does not concern only education and science, but all the parts of the programme declaration, of course.
But there is one matter, which I want to pay more attention to. And I believe that you will be interested in it, because it concerns you. Necessary prerequisite of modernization is ability to apply new information into practice. I suppose that it is also a purpose of the new campus of yours.
As to the number of new patents and new technologies, we are among the last countries in Europe that is lagging behind the USA. Therefore we welcome the effort of the European Commission to support innovations, research and development. And I assure you that our objective is not to let a single euro in Brussels, which we could use for these purposes.
You certainly understand me better that anybody else. It is just this campus, which is the first investment into research and education, let alone the original European Fifteen, which was co-financed by the European Investment Bank.
The Czech technological park, which is for a change connected with the Technical University in Brno, is also an example of successful interconnection of research and industry. Such corporations like the IBM and Honeywell show that this project is successful also commercially and that there is future for it.
An illustration how to attract top world institutes is also the joint project of the St. Ann University Hospital and the Mayo Clinic.
As people say, appetite comes with eating and I understand well your effort to cover these existing or successfully starting projects with something greater. You have already been preparing the Middle-European Technological Institute for two years. It is good, as the fortune favours the brave.
And I believe that not only fortune. The government supports the idea to incorporate the Middle-European Technological Institute into the European Technological Institute. That is your readiness, which might be our advantage.
If things are going well, the EIT will start to operate in the next year. Two years later, in the framework of its infrastructure, the first two so called Knowledge and Information Communities are to start to operate. The Middle-European Technological Institute might be one of them.
I do not mask the fact that the main deal of the work is up to you. The government will not do it instead of you. But it can support you. First, because we have prepared the Operational programme Research and Development for Innovations, where we expect that 8% of allocations from total financial means from Structural Funds will be used.
Apart from the fact that we will enable Czech scientists better access to the European means; we will be lobbying for them, of course. We will be lobbying for the Galileo Project, which would bring new top technologies in the Czech Republic. For the Middle-European Technological Institute. Or for further projects and institutions, which will enable to modernize our country.
And thus I am reverting again to the fundamentals of our civilization. It has always been a feature of our culture to prefer soul to body. Or, if you want, brain is more important than stomach. Modernization means return to traditions. It is necessary to give more financial means to science, research and innovations, instead of spending them unproductively. Soul must be preferred again.
In short, we need to change and to turn the entire philosophy of the welfare state from consumption to production. Education, science and research are huge driving forces of this change. As a philosopher Seneca said: Lazing without education means death and grave for a living man. And I absolutely agree with him.