Prime Minister Sobotka in talks German Minister of Defence Ursula von der Leyen

The Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka and his Minister for Defence Martin Stropnický met on Thursday 4 June 2015 at the Straka Academy with the German Minister of Defence Ursula von der Leyen. They have extensively discussed the Czech-German strategic dialogue and cooperation between their respective Defence Ministries as well as variety of international relations topics.

The strengthening of the Czech-German cooperation represents one of the chief objectives of the Czech government in foreign political area. To this end, the Czech Republic initiated last year the establishment of the Czech-German strategic dialogue.

The importance of this Czech-German strategic dialogue has been confirmed at the meeting of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor Angela Merkel during his working visit to Berlin this May. A declaration, which is to become the fundamental document for this dialogue should be signed by the respective Minister for Foreign Affairs already this summer.

Cooperation in the defence sector represents one of the eight priority topics of the Czech-German strategic dialogue. Czech Republic is interested in establishing a periodical consulting mechanism at the level of Defence Ministers. Today’s meeting is therefore the much needed impulse for more intensive and numerous Czech-German meetings in this format in the future.

Development of military cooperation between the countries has the potential to positively influence the economic area. It may create a number of incentives for cooperation between Czech and German military contractors, which may in turn support economy as a whole and employment policies.

Other topics discussed at this meeting included cooperation within the framework of NATO, issues related to migration, the situation in Ukraine, the situation in combating ISIS and joint coordination of our two countries in enforcing sanctions against Russian Federation.