President of the Slovak Republic Received the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic

President of the Slovak Republic Ivan Gašparovič received Prime Minister of the Czech Republic Jiří Paroubek during his official visit to the Slovak Republic. During their talks, the statesmen underlined the very high level of the relations between the two countries, correct cooperation in all areas as well as regular contacts of the representatives of both countries. They also talked about a new aspect of the Slovak-Czech relations, namely the need to preserve the language understandability between the nations. In order to reach this goal, the involvement and intervention of mass media communication means of the both republic are needed. As regards priorities of foreign policy of the Slovak Republic, they agreed that the V4 cooperation should maintain its eminent position in the long term, and they expressed their support to preserve the Viszegrad cooperation as the primary form of the cooperation in the region. The partners also discussed the ratification process of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. Ivan Gašparovič expressed regret over the outcomes of the French and Dutch referenda. In the past, the European Union, however, already showed that the political will to cooperate is stronger than the faced challenges. Jiří Paroubek and Ivan Gašparovič agreed that it is necessary for the Constitutional Treaty to continue and be completed in each EU member state. Regarding the new financial perspective of the EU in 2007 – 2013, they said that the financial perspective should constitute a balanced framework which would provide adequate space to implement particular priorities of the EU. The principle of solidarity and cohesion, reduction of regional differences as well as support of development and research, whose main purpose is to increase competitiveness of the EU, remain to be the priorities of the Slovak Republic within the new financial perspective. The Czech Prime Minister and the Slovak President touched also on the sensitive issue of the so-called Beneš Decrees, and they expressed their identical unambiguous disapproval of re-opening this question as this would not promote the stability in the Central European space. The topics of discussion included also the problem of reform process in both countries, and the partners agreed on the necessity of reforms that would take into account also social impacts on particular groups of the population.