Press Conferences

6. 4. 2007 13:32

Press conference held after the meeting of the government on Wednesday, 4th April, 2007

Martin Schmarcz, Head of the Press Department of the Office of the Government: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the press conference after the meeting of the Czech government. I welcome here the Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra, I welcome here the Minister of Agriculture Petr Gandalovič and I welcome the Minister of the Government and the Chairman of the Legislative Council of the Government, Mr. Cyril Svoboda. As an introduction, I give the floor to the Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra who will briefly inform you on the agenda of the meeting. After that the ministers present will inform you in detail on points, which were submitted by them or which they are more informed about.
Alexandr Vondra, Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, first of all brief information on the agenda of the meeting. First, in the framework of the first block of European affairs, the Prime Minister informed members of the government on successful yesterday's meeting of the coalition "9" on the Czech position on the oncoming negotiations concerning the institutional reform of the EU. The meeting, as you perhaps know, was held in the Kramář Villa late at night and final agreement on the position has been reached. As to the agenda of the meeting itself, I think that there are four point worth mentioning of all those, which have been approved. There was a long debate about two of them and ministers Petr Gandalovič and Cyril Svoboda will inform you about them. The first one concerns the Bill amending the Act on Acquiring Qualification for Driving of Vehicles and on amendments of related laws. The second one concerned the Act on the Prevention of Cruelty against Animals and Minister Gandalovič will inform you on it. Both bills are transpositions of the European legislation into our legal order and they are also issues, which were subject of political discussions. Furthermore, the government approved the Act on Social Security Insurance and on the State Employment Policy Allowance. That was the point no. 5 and the point no. 6 – the Bill amending the Act on Accident Insurance of Employees and amendments of related laws. Some of other materials, which were on the agenda, were either withdrawn or suspended. That was an introduction and now we will start with the issue concerning driving licences for lorry drivers of.
Martin Schmarcz, Head of the Press Department of the Office of the Government: I thank the Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra and as he has indicated we will inform you on the individual points in the order as they were mentioned. As the first one it will be Cyril Svoboda who will be given the floor to inform you of driving licences for lorry drivers.
Cyril Svoboda, Minister of the Government and the Chairman of the Legislative Council of the Government: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, I will be speaking about the law, which concerns acquiring and improving professional qualification related to driving of lorries. Primarily it concerns lorry and bus drivers. It is related to increase of safety of traffic. The issue concerns a problem how to enhance qualification of drivers. From the legislation that is derived from legislation of European Communities results that there are two possibilities here. The first one is that all drivers will have to absolve a special training. Such training would cost some money and the result is higher qualification of drivers. Or, there is a second alternative for drivers – their duty to pass a special exam. The exam would be complicated and it would last about five hours and a half and then there would have to be driving exams passed to the extent of 100 hours. And communities with extended competences would have to ensure lorries, which would have to be equipped as those which are used in driving schools. The government was trying to decide, which variant was more suitable one. Neither of them was welcomed. But which of them was more acceptable? To introduce a principle of obligatory training of to choose a variant of single examination? The existing law enables just the only one variant in fact and it is the training, because if we chose the variant of single examination we would have to change the system of the law. So, after a long debate the government inclined to introduction of special obligatory training for bus and lorry drivers. The objective, which must be reached, is that drivers will be able to drive buses and lorries throughout the EU in 2008 or in 2009. This is a principle of the bill, I think. It is a complicated issue, of course. The government was discussing it for a long time; we had been studying law of European Communities thoroughly, as our concern was not to burden truckers and to use all possibilities that we have. Thank you.
Martin Schmarcz, Head of the Press Department of the Office of the Government: I thank Minister Cyril Svoboda and now the Minister of Agriculture Petr Gandalovič has the floor.
Petr Gandalovič, Minister of Agriculture: Ladies and gentlemen, debate on the Bill amending the Act on the Prevention of Cruelty against Animals was started last week. Then, faulty information leaked on approval of the bill. Nevertheless, we suspended it because the Ministry of Environment propounded further observations beyond the framework of the original comment procedure. They concerned such value issues, which are propounded whenever this issue is debated. Why did we started to debate this Bill on the Protection of Cruelty against Animals? First, we had to include the new Council Regulation on the protection of animals during transport into our law order. The second reason was that we had to specify legal statute of the Central Commission for Animals Protection, so that it would be in compliance with the new Rules of Administrative Procedure. And the third reason referred to certain derived issues concerning administrative delicts, various property or other issues regarding expropriation of animals and such like. It will be possible to order expropriation of an animal in the new law, and ownership of an animal would be transferred to a municipality. Thus, the legal regime of an expropriated animal is specified, because in the existing practice an animal belongs to person whom was expropriated. But a municipality had to take care of it. Now, the sanction of expropriation in case of cruel treatment enables municipalities to handle an animal according to their decision. The debate was not easy at all; the government is aware of the fact that especially those value issues will be further discussed in the Parliament; nevertheless, it is necessary for these issues, which concern transposition of the European legislation, to be solved as soon as possible. That is why the bill is submitted to the Parliament for the debate.
Martin Schmarcz, Head of the Press Department of the Office of the Government: Ladies and gentlemen, now there is time for your questions. The TV Prima, please.
Martin Erva, TV Prima: I would like to ask whether the government will negotiate with the opposition the reform programme, which was presented yesterday at the Hospodářské noviny Forum and whether it will negotiate with deputies Hovorka and Tlustý, who has already expressed their reservations regarding the reform programme. Thank you.
Martin Schmarcz, Head of the Press Department of the Office of the Government: I am afraid there is nobody here who would be able to answer, as it is a question for the Prime Minister. Nevertheless, I ask if somebody will voluntary raise his hand.
Petr Gandalovič, Minister of Agriculture: Well, I as the Vice-Chairman of the ODS can answer the question. We will negotiate of course with both the opposition and all deputies of the ODS. As you know, a joint meeting of group of deputies of three coalition parties was held yesterday. The meeting will continue and a meeting of the group of deputies of the ODS is scheduled for Tuesday. I am convinced that we will manage to gain all the coalition deputies´ support for those reforms.
Martin Schmarcz, Head of the Press Department of the Office of the Government: An additional question?
Martin Erva, TV Prima: An additional question is if you would be willing to exchange that thick package of reforms for support of deputies or of part of the opposition.
Petr Gandalovič, Minister of Agriculture: I am not entitled to speak for the government. I just say that on the contrary the government decided to submit the proposal, which consists of many bills in fact, and the government will try to preserve the present state.
Martin Schmarcz, Head of the Press Department of the Office of the Government: Český rozhlas, please.
Lucie Husárová, Český rozhlas: I would like to ask a minister what the result of the debate on the Road Traffic Act was; it was a deputies´ proposal. Did you debate it? What was the result?
Alexandr Vondra, Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs: It was not on the agenda today.
Lucie Husárová, Český rozhlas: There was such information on your web-sites.
Cyril Svoboda, Minister of the Government and the Chairman of the Legislative Council of the Government: That was the issue, about which I was talking. It concerns the acquiring and improving professional competences.
Alexandr Vondra, Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs: No, it was not on the agenda. We do not know anything about it; a mistake must have been made, but it was not on the agenda today.
Lucie Husárová, Český rozhlas: I was chasing it up at the Office of the Government at the Legislative Committee.
Martin Schmarcz, Head of the Press Department of the Office of the Government: I do not know anything about it either, further question, please.
Lenka Vodvárková, ČT: Good afternoon. I have one question to Mr. Gandalovič. The European Commission penalized the Czech Republic by 350 million crowns because of excessive stock of agricultural products. Can you explain what it means, in fact and what your response will be?
Petr Gandalovič, Minister of Agriculture: This is an issue that we have been dealing with for a long time. On accession of the Czech Republic to the EU a mechanism was agreed in the framework of those accession documents and since then stock of certain goods must not exceed usual extent, so that the internal market would not affected after the accession of the Czech Republic to the EU. After some years, I do not know exactly when, an investigation was started into extent of the stock and the Commission came to the conclusion that stock of certain goods had been amassed before our accession to the EU, i.e. before 1st May 2004 and that the stock did not correspond to the normal state. Since then, the Czech government, and it was doing also the previous government, has been in the dispute regarding excessive stock of the goods. Just for your information, it concerns rice, chicken meat on the one hand and relatively specific items like champignons or stewed mandarins on the other hand. So, the European Commission has been investigating into all these matters and found out that that we had amassed just those stewed mandarins and thus we could have jeopardized the internal market of the EU. In the course of time we managed to explain number of items and the Commission admitted that there was no excessive stock here and no jeopardy of the internal market occurred. But in case of number of items the dispute is continuing. The European Commission just on the basis of those accession documents and on the basis of its latest sessions decided on penalization. You know that I even tried to reverse those things during my last talks with Commissioner Fischer Boel. There was a chance to reach let us say a kind of a compromise, with lower penalty. But we decided not to accept it as we feel that right is on our side and we will bring an appeal to the European Court of Justice.
Martin Schmarcz, Head of the Press Department of the Office of the Government: I thank the minister. Are there any further questions?
Martin Erva, TV Prima: I would ask Minister Svoboda regarding the yesterday's meeting of leaders of the KDU-ČSL. Do you think that that you will disengage Mr. Čunek, or that you will reprimand him, or what will happen there? What do you expect? What is your attitude after the yesterday's meeting of the tri-coalition? Thank you.
Cyril Svoboda, Minister of the Government and the Chairman of the Legislative Council of the Government: The nation-wide conference of the KDU-ČSL, which is the highest organ between congresses, was summoned today and the only one issue is on the agenda, namely the reform programme. It means there is no other point on the agenda, just this one. It is a decision on the procedure was made – the government decides then general public will be informed, and then groups of deputies and then nation-wide conferences. That is all what I can say regarding that matter. I am not going to speculate on something, which might not be included on the agenda.
Martin Erva, TV Prima: Leaders of your party promised to the ODS and to Greens that it would solve the situation somehow; so, they are not only speculations. I want to ask how you will solve it and whether you will include it on the agenda. Thank you.
Cyril Svoboda, Minister of the Government and the Chairman of the Legislative Council of the Government: To be precise, they were perhaps negotiators in the framework of the presidium of the KDU-ČSL. I am not informed of the result and it is not a buck-passing. This is a very sensitive issue. I will attend the nation-wide conference, of course, I will be dealing with all points of the agenda, but I am not going to propose inclusion of any point on the agenda. But, let us wait for the development of the conference. I say again, the conference is summoned only because of the only one reason and this is the reform. We will see whether the development will lead to inclusion of further point. We will know that even on the spot.
Martin Schmarcz, Head of the Press Department of the Office of the Government: Are there any further questions, please? If it is not so, I thank you.

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