Press Advisories

22. 8. 20109:38

Public Sector Employees Must Bear Part of Necessary Cuts

Prime Minister Petr Nečas was a guest on the Sunday discussion programme Otázky Václava Moravce [Václav Moravec's Questions].

According to Nečas, the Czech secretary for European policy will be named within the next few weeks. He said that it is logical that European policy will be coordinated at the level of the Office of the Government because it is an issue that cuts across ministries. According to the prime minister, there are three most serious candidates. However, he did not reveal names. At the same time, he took issue with a commentary related to the function of the state secretary by First Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg.

The second topic of the programme was budget policy. Nečas estimated that across-the-board cuts could strangle the economy by 0.6 to 0.7 % of GDP. However he emphasised that in the medium term, further deepening of debt would "drag us under by our feet" and the impacts would be much more serious.

The prime minister also confirmed that standard salaries must decrease next year in the public sector. "But it has not been said that everyone's salaries will decline overall. That will depend on managers and supervisors, so that the best employees can be awarded more than the variable part of their salaries, Nečas explained. He also mentioned that more people were laid off in the private sector than in the public sector, and that sharp pay cuts also took place in a number of companies - as much as 25 %, for example. Thus far the public sector has not yet been affected by such changes. According to Nečas, employees in the public sector must bear a portion of necessary cuts.