Speeches
13. 12. 2022 12:19
Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s speech at the conference on Ukraine’s resistance in Paris
Dear President Macron, dear Prime Minister Shmyhal, dear colleagues!
Let me start by thanking you for hosting this important conference.
Our main objective is to ensure more efficient and effectively coordinated assistance to Ukraine. In order to do this, we need to focus on three key areas of support: military, economic, and humanitarian.
First, Ukraine needs us to continue supplies of military equipment, by means of which it can push the aggressor out of its territory. This is the first and most essential condition for ending the war.
Second, we need to be able to guarantee Ukraine's economic stability and long-term financial prospects. That is why I am pleased that the European Union has approved the macro-financial assistance package. It is essential for the Ukrainian government to have enough money to keep the country running smoothly.
Third, if Ukraine is to survive the winter and if we want to prevent a new wave of migration, we must concentrate on humanitarian aid. At the moment, Russia is trying hard to plunge Ukraine into an endless freezing darkness, but we simply must not allow it to do so.
That is why it is particularly important to provide Ukraine with sufficient energy equipment. The Czech Republic is currently supplying two combined heat and power units in the Kharkiv region, ten diesel generators for hospitals and water companies in the Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Lviv regions and 500 heaters for personal use, all worth a total of EUR 2 million. People will thus be able to keep warm and have light even in the event of a power cut.
In terms of shelter and medical assistance, we are supplying fully equipped, insulated accommodation containers to western and central Ukraine worth EUR 2.5 million, or mobile intensive care units to the Ukrainian Ministry of Health worth EUR 1 million.
We have also promised to supply fourteen pontoon bridges and other useful equipment for transportation, agriculture or education.
The success of such donations depends on functional coordination - both between Western donors and between Western and Ukrainian actors. The Czech Republic successfully combines the capacities of national structures, European organisations and private companies in providing assistance.
During our Presidency of the Council of the European Union, we have also contributed to a compromise within the European Union - so that we can provide urgent humanitarian assistance and respond to the needs of war refugees.
This has enabled Europe to harness the capacity of donors, i.e., individual states, European institutions and various partners who have helped to implement the aid.
However, our information from the field shows that aid coordination in Ukraine is still taking place at several separate levels. Ukrainian and international organisations are not cooperating as well as they could. That is why Czechia is currently involved in a pilot project in the Odessa region that focuses on local actors and seeks to strengthen their coordination capacities.
As winter continues, there is a danger of allowing ourselves to be exhausted by urgent problems. However, it would be a mistake to lose focus on long-term plans, especially in terms of stabilisation, post-war re-building, and reconstruction. This includes a tangible prospect of the Ukrainian membership in the European Union, which we should not deny.
It is necessary to assess the progress that Ukraine has made towards membership in the European Union in these extraordinary circumstances. The results that I had the opportunity to see during my last visit to Kiev were impressive.
Ladies and gentlemen, if we can align our assistance effectively, we can direct it exactly where it is most needed.
All of us who are here face all kinds of problems - but right now we must not ease up. Remember that our world has been shaken, but part of the Ukrainian world has completely collapsed.
Fortunately, it is in our power to rebuild it together. Thank you.
Petr Fiala, Prime Minister
