Pavel Sovicka elected as new President of AmCham

Pavel Sovička of Panattoni has been elected president of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Czech Republic by a unanimous vote of its board of directors. 

“It is a tremendous honor to accept the presidency of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Czech Republic,” Sovička says. “Building upon Milan Šlapák’s exceptional leadership and transformative energy that revitalized our advocacy efforts and strengthened member engagement, I am committed to advancing our shared mission during this pivotal moment for Czech-American economic relations.”

Šlapák helped build Amcham’s advocacy approach of constructing Czech innovativeness on a series of big bets that involved company, university and government commitments to develop and produce advanced technology in the country. The first big bet project- GE Aviation’s Catalyst engine project with CVUT- is now shipping some of the world’s most advanced turboprop engines to the world market. 

“I am happy that what we started is now showing real and positive results,” Šlapák says. “It has been great to be able to make the argument and to work with some of the best people in the business, academic and government sector on something we all believe in: this country’s potential to be a top innovative economy. As someone who is deeply involved in creating the infrastructure, Pavel has the critical expertise to make progress easier and faster. We need a better land use policy from planning to permit, and Pavel has the talent and drive to help get us there.”

AmCham is preparing its Letter on Innovation to deliver to the next government. The letter will focus on technology, people and infrastructure policy necessary for the country to become a top ten EU economy.

“What is happening around does not change what we need to,” Weston Stacey of AmCham says. “It just lets us know how urgently we need to act. Standing still means losing ground. We need to develop much more advanced technology here, we need to widen the talent pool for developing such technology in university classroom and through immigration, and need the infrastructure makes it a competitive advantage to develop technology, as well as live and work in the country.”