Bavaria’s Prime Minister Söder is traveling to the Czech Republic for the first time. There is a lot of agreement, just not when it comes to a nuclear repository.
Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) traveled to the Czech Republic for an official visit for the first time since taking office in 2018. He met Prime Minister Petr Fiala in Prague on Thursday. Söder wrote to him in February with the desire to “initiate the next stage in Bavarian-Czech relations” and suggested a broad-based neighborhood strategy.
After Horst Seehofer, Söder is only the second Bavarian Prime Minister to visit the neighboring country. During a historic trip in 2010, Seehofer initiated the end of the “Ice Age” between the countries. The relationship had long been tense because of the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans after the war.
The focus of the meeting was energy security, as stated in a press conference afterwards. From now on, 17 percent more oil will flow through Bavarian pipelines to the Czech Republic. In general, European cooperation is required here, you have to “link each other up” in the crisis, said Söder. On the other hand, there was “no agreement” on the Czech plans for a planned nuclear waste repository near the border, “another location could of course make us happier,” said the Bavarian Prime Minister.
However, he is grateful to Prague that the country has nuclear energy and is an “example of how you can help shape a socially acceptable energy mix of the future”. Deficits in the train connection between the capitals, as recently criticized by the SPD in the state parliament, also made Söder out – but saw the federal government as the primary responsibility for the electrification of routes in eastern Bavaria.
It was a meeting “in a friendly spirit,” said Fiala. In addition to the “big Munich-Prague line”, Söder announced that there would also be more impetus for the “border area interdependence”, for example culturally and academically. In view of the past, there are “many old wounds that can never be completely forgotten”. You can also take the old scar “as a motivation to shape the future”.