Czech Business Today

According to Czech government, main priorities of the new Growth and Jobs Strategy should remain because broadening of the content could lead to the worsened governance and communicability of the Strategy. Structural reforms and adherence to the Stability and Growth Pact are necessary to achieve these goals. 

Key factors to be taken into account are: aging population, insufficient labour productivity and growth of global competition, market of high value-added goods and services and long-term sustainability of public finances. 

External agenda has to play supportive role – EU´s role of a key global player, promoting free global trade, ensuring the strategic raw materials and energy sources, active role within the international finance mechanisms. Set of coherent policy principles and partial goals must be defined within the framework of the policy areas mentioned. The synergy and interlinking of macroeconomic, microeconomic and employment policies should be ensured. Biggest drawbacks of the Lisbon Strategy were of procedural and ownership nature and not of content. 

Czech businesses call for:

• In general, to overcome main challenges of today such economic crisis, ageing population, climate change or access to energy, Europe has to stabilize financial markets and public finances, undergo structured reforms and keep open markets through priority to Single Market, ambitious trade policy and support to innovation, research and education.
• More in detail, Czech businesses support entrepreneurship, removal of the administrative burden, better regulation, support to innovation, improvement of global competitiveness, flexibility of the labour market, better education and training ensuring supply of skilled workers, better use of the results of research and development, enhanced interaction between universities and businesses and removal of the remaining barriers of the internal market
• New approach to self-employed people should be considered to ensure their competitiveness, social security and access to EU programmes as they represent a large and important social and economic power of the European economy and society.