President of the Slovak Republic Visited Latvia and Bulgaria

On 18 - 20 May, President Ivan Gašparovič made a working trip to Latvia and Bulgaria. In Riga, the Slovak President met with President of Latvia Vaira Vike Freiberg.

They talked about the prepared official visit of the Latvian head of state to Slovakia to be held in July this year. However, their talks included mainly the issue of the European Constitutional Treaty. An interesting point of the President’s program in Latvia was the efforts of the Slovak head of state to support the ambitions of the Slovak Republic to host the 2011 Ice Hockey World Championship.

President Ivan Gašparovič presented arguments in favour of organizing the Championship in Slovakia also to the delegates of the International Ice Hockey Federation who finally decided that the 2011 Ice Hockey World Championship would be held in Slovakia. On 19 May 2006 President Ivan Gašparovič delivered a speech at the 13th Summit of Presidents of Central European Countries in Varna, Bulgaria. In his address, President Ivan Gašparovič focused on the presence and the future of the already existing cooperation of the involved countries.

He supported strengthening of mutual contacts at all levels, exchange of views and experience which he finds to be one of the most important tools to cultivate mutual understanding, tolerance and cooperation. Then Ivan Gašparovič spoke about the importance of the cooperation of the V4 countries. As he said, the aim of the countries attending the Summit should be turning Central Europe into a permanent organic part of the unified Europe, politically stable and economically flourishing.

Within the Summit program, the Central European Presidents talked also to business representatives. They talked about the partnership of the public and private sectors, as a key to building and using the technical infrastructure in Central Europe. During the discussion Ivan Gašparovič said that as yet Slovakia is only at the stage of having intentions to use the forms of the public-private partnership, namely in the area of building the freeway network.

According to Ivan Gašparovič, the partnership of communal bodies with small regional companies is a better option to test the public-private partnership than huge infrastructure projects. Among others, also because the temptation to corrupt is incomparably stronger in the case of big investment projects considering huge sums to be invested.