On August 14, Secretary-General Lin Jih-Jia of the Legislative Yuan led an 8-member delegation of legislative civil servants to meet respectively with Mr. Martin Plíšek, Secretary-General of the Chamber of Deputies Martin Plíšek and Ms. Sylva Kyselova, Deputy Secretary-General of the Czech Senate in Prague, Czech Republic. These two meetings were also attended by civil servants from Parliamentary Institute, Plenary Session Department, Human Resources Department, and International Relations Department of the Czech Chamber of Deputies, and representatives from the Office of the Senate President, IT Department, Independent Personnel Unit, Legislative Department, Foreign Relations Department, Public Relations Unit, and Secretariat of the Secretary-General from the Senate.

In his address, Secretary-General Lin expressed his gratitude to Secretary-General Plíšek and Deputy Secretary-General Kyselova, and elaborated the significance of his delegation. He took the newly launched direct flight from Taipei to Prague as an example. The new flight route takes only 13 hours since it commenced on October 18. After witnessing full occupancy of the flight, he felt the geographic distance will never be a problem for the betterment of bilateral relationship between two countries. On behalf of President You Si-kun of the Legislative Yuan, he extended his sincere gratitude to Czech Senate President Miloš Vystrčil and Chamber of Deputies President Markéta Pekarová Adamová for their efforts in promoting ties between Taiwan and the Czech Republic.

Secretary-General Lin continued by noting the significant official exchanges of visit between the two countries over the past three years. In 2020, Senate President Vystrčil led a delegation of nearly a hundred members to visit Taiwan, making him the first sitting President of the Senate from a country that dose not have diplomatic ties with Taiwan to deliver a speech in the assembly chamber of our parliament. Last July, President You led a cross-party parliamentary delegation to pay a return visit to the Czech Republic, during which received a high standard and warm reception from the Czech government. President You thus turned out to be the first president of the Legislative Yuan to deliver a speech in the Senate. In March of this year, Chamber of Deputies President Adamová led a strong delegation of 160 representatives from various sectors to visit Taiwan. During the visit, President Adamová and President You signed a joint declaration of parliamentary friendship and cooperation. President Adamová became the first female parliament speaker from a non-diplomatic ally being awarded the “First-Class Medal of Honor for Parliamentary Diplomacy” and delivering a speech in our chamber. These fruitful results would not have achieved without collaborations from both sides.

Secretary-General Lin emphasized that the most crucial task of this delegation is to establish a foundation for regular visits between parliamentary personnel from two sides. Hopefully, the exchanges in areas such as support system, technology, legislative review, parliamentary diplomacy and architecture of both parliaments could be further enhanced.

In response, Secretary-General Plíšek of the Chamber of Deputies and Deputy Secretary-General Kyselova of the Senate welcomed the delegation to the Czech Republic. Both parties also engaged in extensive discussions on various parliamentary hardware and software projects while recognizing the significance of parliamentary personnel exchanges. The officials from the Chamber of Deputies stated that they hope to submit a personnel exchange program to the Chamber for consideration this September. Accordingly, it is likely that a delegation of the Chamber could be sent to visit the Legislative Yuan in the spring of next year.