EU should expand to ensure that it can compete with the world
Fiscal responsibility, strategic partnerships but also the Roma issue – these were the main themes of the EU Summit.
Petr Nečas attended his first EU Summit in the role of Czech Prime Minister. He also met the NATO Secretary-General.
At the Summit the Czech Republic was in favour, for example, of automatic sanctions for those states that will not comply with budget rules. “So far we have approved a specific form of supervision, but we emphasised that it is necessary to stipulate threshold values and parameters”, said Prime Minister Petr Nečas and added that the final report of the Task Force is to be discussed in October.
The Czechs also pushed through the coordination of neighbouring politics into a foreign document, the so-called Eastern Partnership. “We pointed out that the European Union is a strong economic player and in order for it to remain so in the future, it will have to work on competitiveness, modernise our economies and expand the Union even further,” the Prime Minister said.
One of the conclusions of the Council of Europe was also an instruction from the Member States to their representative Lady Ashton to negotiate about cooperation between the EU and NATO.
A hot topic during the discussions was also the actions of the French, who in the summer began to increase their deportations of Romanian and Bulgarian Roma who remained in France without the necessary means and permits required by law after their three-month legal stay.
“The atmosphere there was rather dramatic. It confirmed my idea that European politics have now become domestic politics. Pushing through one’s opinions is today more than diplomatic negotiating. I was witness to a standard difference of opinions, and this is usually the case,” added the Prime Minister on the stormy discussion between the French President and the President of the European Commission.
NATO: Czechs should be responsible for training on missions
After the session of the Council of Europe, Prime Minister Petr Nečas met NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The main subject of their meeting was Czech participation in missions. “Our participation in Afghanistan missions would be mainly through training units. There is strong demand for them and we will discuss this at both government and parliament levels,” said the Prime Minister, describing the results of the meeting.
According to the Prime Minister, NATO’s key task must remain the territorial defence of member states. However, there are also a great many new challenges such as weapons of mass destruction, international terrorism and ballistic rockets. “We also spoke in short of anti-missile defence, respectively a system that would provide protection for its members,” Petr Nečas added.
