Czech, Slovak leadersmark 1993 split

Necas (left) with Fico in Brno on the 20th anniversary of the establishment of Czech Republic and Slovak Republic.

AFP/Prague

The prime ministers of the Czech Republic and Slovakia both sounded an upbeat note yesterday as they looked back on the peaceful split of the former Czechoslovakia into two states 20 years ago.

“The step was correct, and it was the only option,” Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas said during a televised meeting with his Slovak counterpart Robert Fico in the southern Czech city of Brno.

“The two decades have confirmed this, we can see a very good development of both countries and their mutual ties,” added the rightwing prime minister, in office since 2010.

The split was propelled by separatists in Slovakia who had long felt slighted by Prague – a situation that Fico, a leftist in office since April 2012, described as “unsustainable”.

“I felt we had to come up with a solution, that the situation was unsustainable at the moment,” he said.

Czechoslovakia, founded in 1918 after World War I brought down the Austro-Hungarian empire, split on January 1, 1993, just over three years after shedding its four-decade Communist regime.

As independent countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia joined the European Union in 2004. Slovakia also entered the eurozone in 2009.

They have also joined Nato – the Czechs in 1999, Slovakia in 2004.

“Owing to our presence in the (visa-free) Schengen area, our current co-operation is equal to being in a single country,” said Necas.

In Brno, some 200km southeast of Prague and 130km north of Bratislava, the two leaders met in the Tugendhat villa, a Unesco-listed world heritage site.

The villa was the setting for key talks between former Czech and Slovak prime ministers Vaclav Klaus and Vladimir Meciar in the run-up to Czechoslovakia’s split into the Czech Republic, which today has 10.5mn people, and Slovakia, a nation of 5.4mn.

Fico said that the only thing he regretted about the split was a loss of weight on the international scene.

“When a country with 15mn or 20mn people speaks in the EU, its weight is bigger, we have to admit that. But that’s the only thing we lost,” he said.

Necas and Fico also vowed to boost co-operation following the first joint meeting of their governments last October.

With the Czech Republic hit by recession and Slovakia keen to maintain rosy economic growth, the two leaders named nuclear energy, air defence, oil and gas supplies and freight railway transport as areas where co-operation might save money.