A number of Czech Centres may come under the jurisdiction of embassies
As Radio Prague notes, concerts, exhibitions, foreign language courses – all this can now be seen in the activities of the so-called Czech Centres in 20 countries around the world. Currently, 11 of them could come under the jurisdiction of embassies, including major European capitals – Brussels, Vienna and London.
"According to our plan, the Czech Centres will not only promote Czech culture, but will also represent other fields. Through economic diplomacy, we want the Czech Centres to cooperate better with the embassies," explains the reasons for the planned innovations, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Michaela Lagronová.
It is not ruled out that some centres will move from their separate buildings to under the wing of diplomatic missions. Thus, the Czech Foreign Ministry plans to save significant funds.
However, the new plan is causing contradictory reactions from both representatives of Czech Centres and the embassies themselves. Officially, it is not being commented on yet, but according to some centre representatives, the innovation will rather harm the well-established work of these institutions. The Czech Foreign Ministry, however, believes that 11 of these centres are improperly using embassy privileges – diplomatic passports, embassy car licence plates, bank accounts, and others. Among other things, this causes difficulties in embassy accounting. Currently, Czech Centres are not part of embassies, and this could change in the future. According to an official statement from the Czech Foreign Ministry, however, the main reason is to expand the range of fields for promoting the Czech Republic abroad, for example, products of Czech companies.
"I assume the plan will be fully ready within a few months. So by the end of the year we could implement a number of changes related to the internal organization and workflow of the Czech Centres," reports Michaela Lagronová.
One employee, who wished to remain anonymous, believes that with the shift towards business, a change in priorities on which the work of the centres is based will occur, and if those priorities change, then the need for these centres to exist will disappear.
The planned changes in Czech Centres abroad have not left politicians indifferent. Consequently, the problem of organizations existing on subsidies will be dealt with by the ruling coalition and deputies. Objections to the government plan are expressed mainly by Christian Democrats. "If such a serious reform is not properly discussed both with the ambassadors themselves and with the Czech Centres, it could damage the very essence of these centres. The idea itself seems logical to me, but its implementation must be brilliant not to harm the Czech Centres," believes Christian Democrat and Chairman of the Parliamentary European Committee, Ondřej Benešík.
The coalition movement ANO supports the reorganization of the Czech Centres: "On the contrary, it should happen centrally," believes the head of the ANO movement and Minister of Finance, Andrej Babiš.
The idea of the Czech Foreign Ministry is criticized by former Czech ambassador to London Michael Žantovský, who believes that due to the innovation, the Czech Republic will lose one of its well-functioning diplomatic bodies. Former Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg speaks similarly: "This is because we still have the conviction of past times that the only interesting thing is economic indicators, and everything else is just an appendage."
This topic is also to be considered at one of the upcoming meetings of MPs from the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, whose chairman is Schwarzenberg.