BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel hailed Thursday the new Czech government’s support of the European Union’s fiscal discipline pact, adopted to help the bloc out of a debilitating debt crisis.

“We were pleased in Germany to see that the new Czech government has made a few corrections to its Europe policy: that the fiscal pact will also be accepted and signed by the Czech side,” Merkel told reporters after talks with new prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka.

Merkel praised Prague’s healthy public finances as “good news”, with the debt ratio well within European limits at 46 per cent of gross domestic product.

“It is easier to work together when you share the same European goals,” she said.Sobotka, a Social Democrat in a three-party, centre-left coalition, described his government as “Europe-friendly” and said it aimed to actively take part “in future discussions on the further development of the European Union”.

“We want to be a country at the heart of European integration,” he said.The previous Czech centre-right government joined Britain in January 2012 in rejecting the EU’s fiscal discipline deal for eurozone countries and those obliged to adopt the single currency, which was aimed at cleaning up public finances in the wake of the debt debacle.

Prague had also adopted a very cautious “wait and see” policy on adopting the euro, although it is obliged to eventually do so under the terms of its 2004 EU accession.

Merkel and Sobotka said they also shared the view that Russia must respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and warned they would back new sanctions at an EU summit next week if Moscow failed to back down.—AFP