Sources say that Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová had to persuade a reluctant Czech President, Petr Pavel, to host Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on the first traditional diplomatic visit to the neighbouring country.
Nonetheless, Pavel and Fico came to Czechia on Friday as Slovakia’s newly elected prime minister.
However, in the run-up to the official state visit, Pavel was reportedly upset by Fico insisting to visit him on a day when he and the leaders of the Czech parliament, Miloš Vystrčil and Markéta Pekarová Adamová, had other plans and “refused to move an inch”, Novinky.cz reports.
Also reported to have struck a nerve with Pavel was Fico’s plan to meet with former prime minister Andrej Babiš and former president Miloš Zeman.
“That is diplomatically totally unacceptable. When a prime minister makes his first visit to a country, he is supposed to meet with the president and prime minister, not with the head of the opposition or a former president,” the publication’s source claimed.
What apparently made Pavel reconsider was a November meeting with Čaputová – upholding the long-held tradition for the new prime minister to make his first foreign visit to the neighbouring state to benefit historically friendly Slovak-Czech relations.
During Friday’s visit, however, the two leaders’ opposing views on the war in Ukraine were an obvious sticking point. While Czechia remains an advocate of Kyiv, Fico campaigned to stop Slovak military aid, calling the situation a “frozen conflict” that cannot be solved by sending arms.
“Good relations between our countries are an absolute priority, and pre-election rhetoric can no longer enter into the current cooperation,” Pavel said after the meeting.
Fico was met by a small group of protesters in the Czech Republic who told him to ‘go home to Russia’. However, Czech Prime Minister Fiala said that Czechia would support Slovakia in its attempt to extend its exemption from the EU-wide ban on exporting Russian oil products.
The current exemption, which expires on 5 December, allows Slovakia’s Slovnaft refinery, part of the Hungarian MOL group, to export products made from Russian crude oil to Czechia. Slovakia claims the ban would shut down the refinery altogether, leading to shortages.
Slovnaft had a year to deal with its reliance on Russian oil but did not manage to invest in technology that would allow it to diversify in that time despite record profits.
(Barbara Zmušková | Euractiv.sk)
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