Last year was not easy for everyone. The next month will not be easy either. But the government is doing everything to manage the situation, ODS Prime Minister Petr Fiala wrote on social networks on the first anniversary of his coalition appointment. He reviewed his cabinet’s accomplishments and confirmed that he is working with his ministers to minimize the impact of the crisis on the lives of citizens.
“As a result of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, our country faces many great challenges that were unimaginable until recently. We are working to minimize it. All of us.” Prime Minister wrote.
He recalled the last big wave of the novel coronavirus pandemic and said it was managed thanks to the cooperation and responsibility of citizens. The largest war conflict has broken out in Europe, he added.
purple government appointed President Milos Zeman on December 17 last year. Five parties from two coalitions were sitting there. For the Spolu coalition, it is ODS, KDU-ČSL, and TOP 09, while the other coalitions are Pirates and Mayors. In last October’s elections, these parties defeated former Prime Minister Andrei Babis’s ANO campaign to replace him.
For example, Fiala pointed out in his review that the Czech Republic has received more than 460,000 refugees from Ukraine, mostly women and children. But most of them have already left the country. The prime minister also mentioned the shortage of energy and its rising price.
“We responded quickly and had enough gas for this winter. Based on our records, we filled our storage tanks and purchased the required capacity at an LNG terminal in the Netherlands,” Fiala wrote. “We have resisted populist pressure for many expensive and dysfunctional interventions in the free market, which allows us to refuel at pre-war prices today, while gasoline and diesel are in other countries It gets more expensive and drivers have to wait longer.
The Prime Minister also praised the achievements at the end of the Czech Presidency on the European Union Council. “We were able to adopt many European solutions to high energy prices that positively impacted all citizens. We could negotiate many things that analysts called impossible. done,” he said.
For example, the Fiala government passed two state budgets for this year and next year. When President Milos Zeman vetoed an increase in the budget deficit this year, the government coalition was able to overturn it. However, opposition parties ANO and SPD have been criticizing the coalition government in the House of Representatives. The coalition has accused it, for example, of failing to save its budget and saddled the country with too much debt.
Lukasz Kovanda, chief economist at Trinity Bank, also said the Fial government faced unexpected difficulties in its first year in power. But from an economic point of view, he says, it cannot be compared to the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.
“The economy has since suffered the most severe decline in the history of the Czech Republic, but will grow this year. We were able to do it,” says Kovanda. According to him, the Cabinet scored points in the organization of the EU’s presidential office. On the one hand, he criticized the government for providing costly general aid to the poor rather than targeted aid.
