Meeting of State Secretary with DG REFORM delegation

On 17 September 2021, State Secretary for the European Affairs Ms Milena Hrdinková met in Prague a delegation from the European Commission (EC), namely the Directorate-General for the Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM). The main agenda of the meeting was the DG REFORM support for the implementation process of Czech Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP).

The DG REFORM delegation, led by Director Judit Rozsa, visited the Czech Republic in context of project preparations for the Technical Support Instrument (TSI), in particular regarding the current TSI autumn call.  

The TSI is the directly managed EC support programme.  The Section of European Affairs at the Office of the Government serves as the coordinating authority for the Czech Republic. The TSI programme supports the public administration institutions of EU member states during the preparation and implementation process of the reforms. The TSI covers analysis and expertise elaboration, the exchange of experiences with the other EU member states institutions, educational activities and statistical data collection.

The TSI tool succeeds the previous Structural Reform Support Programme (SRSP), which operated at the end of last programming period with almost identical parameters. The total TSI allocation was set by the relevant regulation for the period 2021 – 2027 to 864 million EUR. So far, 49 projects from the Czech Republic were supported by the TSI and SRSP programme.

Project applications by the public administration institutions are currently being prepared for this second TSI regular call (with the deadline for the submission to DG REFORM by 31 October 2021). As resulted from the meeting with the DG REFORM, the priority for the Czech Republic and DG REFORM represents the projects which help with the implementation of Czech Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP).

The Czech RRP was approved by the government on 17 May and, after the negotiations with the EC and Council preparatory bodies, by the Council on 9 September 2021 (in the form of Council Implementation Decision). The Czech Republic will be able to receive financial support in amount of approximately EUR 7 billion.

During the meeting, the Director Judit Rozsa presented the new component of this second TSI regular call – flagships. 13 flagships, designed by DG REFORM on an analysis of the frequent measures in RRPs of individual EU member states.

In the debate with the DG REFORM delegation, State Secretary Hrdinková stated, that key national priority is the digitalization agenda, including digitalization of public administration. This priority is reflected even by several measures in Czech RRP.

After the meeting with State Secretary, DG REFORM delegation attended the technical consultations on particular drafted projects with the representatives of the Department of the National Recovery Plan Coordination, Ministry of Industry and Trade and Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, Ministry of Health, Ministry for the Regional Development and National Agency for Communication and Information Technologies.