Press Advisories

17. 4. 201816:21

Premier Babiš met with Thomas Stelzer, the head of government of Upper Austria

Prime Minister Andrej Babiš met on Tuesday, 17 April 2018, with Thomas Stelzer, the Governor of the Province of Upper Austria. They spoke about political and economic cooperation of both countries and they evaluated positively the cross-border cooperation at the level of regions.

"The Czech-Austrian relations have shown very positive dynamics in recent years. We conduct a political dialogue at all levels, the turnover of mutual trade is growing steadily, between 2016 and 2017 it even increased by 12.5%, and the border regions of both countries are closely cooperating as well. I strongly believe that this trend will continue,“ said Premier Andrej Babiš after the meeting.

Another theme of the meeting between the Czech prime minister and the Austrian governor was transport infrastructure, mainly the unfinished motorway D3 in the section České Budějovice - Linz and the railway connection of Prague and Linz. Apart from that, they discussed the cooperation of rescue services and the successful project developing an Austrian version of the mobile application Záchranka (Ambulance). They also mentioned cooperation of the countries in education, where both countries contribute an equal share of funding to the scholarship programme AKTION intended for higher education students.

According to Premier Babiš, the Czech-Austrian relations are very good, both politically and economically. Both countries successfully develop new formats of cooperation, such as the Slavkov Format or the regular meetings of ministers of foreign affairs with the presidents and governors of border regions or provinces. For the Czech Republic, Austria is one of the most important economic partners. The total value of direct Austrian investment in the Czech Republic is estimated at over EUR 13 billion.