Alena Schillerová, the chair of the ANO parliamentary group, started this interview with her favorite quote: “Human happiness is a sort of string that we thread many beads of tiny little joys onto. The tinier they are, the more of them there are, the greater the happiness in the end.” So we started on the topic of happiness.
What beads of joy are essential for you?
My family is my elixir of happiness. Moments spent with my son and daughter, and my two beloved grandsons, eight-year-old František and eighteen-month-old Jaroušek, whom I spoil rotten, as any grandmother should. I always joke that it’s the parents’ job to do the actual raising, and my job is the spoiling. Just the other day, my daughter complained about František declaring, “I love spending time at Grandma’s, I can do whatever I want over there.” Well, I can’t exactly deny that... [laughs]
What do you recall from your own motherhood?
I got married at eighteen years of age, then entered university shortly after that, and gave birth to my daughter Petra in January. It was a hectic motherhood, I had to make it work with my rather challenging law studies. But you’re at the height of your strength at that age, so you can handle a whole lot. But I can certainly say that motherhood was a huge lesson for me, and taught me a lot about life in general. I do believe children are the best life coaches we’ve got. They reflect our own selves back at us, and teach us to look at the world differently – be it to learn how each new generation views that world, or to be reminded of all those things we adults so conveniently forget with time. They force us to keep our eyes open. Just like Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince. And because I was a very young mother, I feel I can only truly appreciate all this as a grandmother.
How do you spend your time with your grandsons?
I’m at my happiest and most grateful when it’s the two of them together. We spend hours playing, laughing and just plain old having a good time. And even though they’re seven years apart in age, it’s lovely to see how kind they are to one another, how the older one takes care of the younger one, who can in turn learn from him. Just the other day I gave both of them one of those push cars, one proportionately small, and one rather large. It was very entertaining to watch little Jaroušek, incapable of coming to terms with his smaller toy, spend so much time playing with his cousin’s much bigger one, even though it was about three times his size. It’s as if he was making sure I knew that he was thinking, "Come on, Grandma, surely you didn’t think I’d be okay with having something smaller than František does."
How do you find the time to take care of yourself among all your numerous political responsibilities? And does mental hygiene factor in?
I consider it my responsibility to take care of myself properly. Often it takes up quite a lot of time, but I simply must find that time for a hairdresser’s appointment, or to get my nails done. On the one hand, I feel like it’s a part of the responsibilities stemming from my position itself, on the other, I want to inspire all the women who often write to me, telling me how my hairdo or my outfit inspired them. None of us are getting any younger, but I do believe that one is never too old to care how one looks and presents herself to other people. And when it comes to mental hygiene, what really works for me is going to church, taking a walk, or maybe a good massage.
Can you think of any one moment when you first considered entering high politics?
I spent all my life working at the Ministry of Finance, and I advanced my career step by tiny step. My three decades of service to the state taught me just how difficult it is to make one positive change happen, but also how important those changes are, and how much easier they can make people’s lives. What really separates antediluvian bureaucracy from a clever, Estonian-adjacent state administration, is a whole lot of small changes. You can’t just keep talking about change, though, you really need to work for it. And it so happens that that work is usually very hard. That’s why I felt very lucky to meet Andrej Babiš when he was minister of finance, because he shares my values, and gave me the opportunity to move things forward. Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka first rejecting me for the post of minister of finance was a very hard political lesson for me. A lesson that taught me that even if you spend your entire life living lawfully, without needless scandal, it simply doesn’t guarantee that you won’t get denigrated and defamed in politics. You always have people adding their own spin on things, twisting things around, or making them up altogether. That’s the unfortunate reality of politics in this country.
What stands out to you the most, out of the period of time that the ANO movement led the government?
I’m very proud to see what strides Czechia has made in the past decade, be it in standards of living, or the quality of state administration. We started collecting taxes differently, the state worked with a steady budget or even a slight surplus, until the arrival of Covid that is. We saw an increase in pensions and an end to the politics of constant tax increases. We ceased to be a casino in the middle of Europe. We simply did politics for the people. Without corruption or clientelism. We found our place among the truly developed countries. But there’s always room for improvement. Every single day I get emails with good ideas on where the state fails or doesn’t work the way it should. It is thanks to that that we’ve prepared many new projects designed to make living in Czechia much easier.
And how would you rate our current government?
The main issue our current government forgets about is the income side of the budget. That means properly collecting taxes without raising them, active ownership policy where the state’s concerned, and an emphasis on European money. If the government didn’t neglect these things, its aid for households and companies could be much more extensive. My priority is, of course, budget consolidation, which is a concept that should not remain just some words written on paper. We still have all of these tax exemptions in the tens of billions to grapple with, we waste resources on pointless ministries, and lose billions due to tax evasion.
CV BOX
Alena Schillerová (born March 18, 1964, in Brno) is an MP for the ANO 2011 movement and former minister of finance.
She graduated in law from the Masaryk University in Brno. She went on to work at the Brno-Country Financial Office, later becoming the director.
She was the chief director of the Taxes and Customs Department at the MoF, starting in 2016. In 2017, she was appointed minister of finance, which was a position she held until the 2021 election, since which she has been an MP. She is also the vice-chair of the ANO 2011 movement as of last February.
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