Crisis on transport demand

The present Czech ruling coalition within the election campaign promised a „programme of budget responsibility“ that has been fulfilled mostly by cuts of public expenses, public investment included, with the excessive emphasis on awareness of heavy indebtedness of the Greek economy and its consequences.But the Czech Republic has been, despite introducing equal and relatively low taxation that lowered the state budget incomes on the eve and in the initial stage of the crisis, in the position of the first third or in the middle of all Member states (states of the euro area included) and therefore it does not need to cut expenses that could support sustainable growth and mainly employment – in accordance with all recommendations at the EU level. Due to the second assessment of the health of public finance from the beginning of this year, corrected in the spring of 2011 in the EU development prognosis, the Czech Republic has been at the level of state budget deficits together with Slovenia in the 13th position within
EU, despite decreased taxation in the years 2006 – 2009, in the same position regarding the rate of growth of the state debt and in the 6th position with the state debt as a decisive indicator of the assessment of the health of state finance; swift actions toward Maastricht’s criteria have been based predominantly on cuts of spending, which means postponed periods of faster economic development and employment to the future years after a fully balanced budget, but much later.
1.2 Transport infrastructure as a source of funding general budget
The incomes from all taxation concerning especially road transport were more than twice as high as the part of the state budget allocated in favour of transport and its infrastructure. The main effort to cover at least a small part of investment deficits is oriented on further taxation of direct users of road infrastructure, which at present is relatively very high too.
1.3 Changing economic milieu of transport
The strategy „Europa 2020“ stressed the crucial importance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for further sustainable development and namely growth of employment.
It has been many times stated the decisive role of SMEs in the past period of fast development of the EU within 2000 – 1st half of 2008 – before the indicative beginning of the financial crisis. It is supposed that after full implementation of ten groups of measures and actions from the Small Business Act, such development should repeat. (…)

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