State Secretary Maja Vrtarić met with Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic Marcel Peško

Secretary General Peško informed the attendees about the new strategy entitled “A Successful Slovakia in a Safe World”, and about the new organisational structure of the Slovakian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He noted that after having fulfilled the main foreign policy goals – accession to the EU and NATO – Slovakia now views its foreign policy from the perspective of the global processes setting out new priorities. In this sense, as the precondition for successful operation of the foreign affairs service in the new international circumstances, the Slovakian Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched a systematic modernisation of the Ministry and diplomatic network.

The modernisation strategy should provide for a better correlation between foreign policy priorities and concrete activities of the Ministry and embassies, and one of the focal points is stronger development of public and economic diplomacy. The Ministry carried out a detailed review of the work of its diplomatic and consular network. Presently, Slovakia has approximately 90 diplomatic missions, of which around 60 are embassies. The largest number, 52%, are small diplomatic missions with 1-2 diplomats (including the head of the mission). In 2008, the number of people employed at the foreign service totalled 1035, 427 of whom were at the Ministry and 608 in diplomatic and consular missions. In the process of rationalisation and reorganisation since Slovakia’s accession to the EU and NATO in 2004, the number of employees has been continuously decreasing, both in the Ministry and the diplomatic network abroad.

State Secretary Vrtarić thanked Secretary General Peško for the presentation he gave and she said that the experiences of the Slovak Republic concerning the reform and modernisation of diplomacy were also valuable to the Republic of Croatia, in particular in the context of its accession to the European Union.

Today Secretary General Peško met with State Secretary for European Integration Davor Božinović and Director of the Diplomatic Academy Mladen Andrlić, with whom he also exchanged experiences concerning integration processes for full membership of the European Union, especially with regard to modernising the foreign affairs service.