Association for Foreign Investment

2004/04/13, Discussion on the topic of "Economic Aspects of the Czech Foreign Policy after the EU Accession"

The series of regular meetings with the top representatives of the Czech state continued by another of the "Breakfast with..." on April 13, 2004 when the invitation of the Association for Foreign Investment - AFI and of CzechInvest - Business Support Agency of the Czech Republic accepted Mr. Jan Kolář, the State Secretary for European Affairs and the future Czech Ambassador to the EU.

To open the discussion Mr. Kohout summarized the strategies of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the EU as an objective to keep the Czech Republic´s own integrity when at the same time contributing with its potential and unique characteristics.

When anwering the question about visa policy towards expats, Mr. Kolář stressed the attepms of Ministry of Foreign Affairs to further develpo a kind of "synergic process" by closely cooperating with Ministry of Social Affairs and the Ministry of Interior consisting mainly in providing comprehensive and unified information.

At this point Mr. Kolář also mentioned the opposite side of this issues, which are the visa policies of other EU countries towards Czech citizens. The Czech Republic aims at negotiating on a concrete practice with every particular EU country, which the Ministry of Foreign affairs calls "diferentiation strategy" - it also contains monitoring of all available data proving the Czech workforce is not of any danger for foreign economies as well as promoting such areas where Czech specialist are on the top and that could therefore be of a great benefit for other EU countries.

Also in questions regarding possibilities of strenghtening labor union´s power after the EU Accession, Mr. Kolář assured investors there are no legal or other provisions neither in Acquis Communitaire nor in the Czech Law that would enable the rise of their power towards employers.