The director of NPÚ will be Goryczková, she was appointed by the minister today

Prague - The new director of the National Heritage Institute (NPÚ) is Naděžda Goryczková. The Minister of Culture Václav Jehlička (KDU-ČSL) announced this at today's press conference, where he appointed the director. Goryczková, the current director of the Ostrava branch of the heritage institute, was unanimously recommended by the selection committee to the minister. She will replace Pavel Jerie, who is stepping down at his own request.
    Jerie decided to abdicate because he reportedly did not have the opportunity to "put the institute together and implement organizational changes", and he also speaks of the pressure that was exerted on him due to an alleged intention to place selected monuments into a newly established legal entity - according to him, this could lead to state property being acquired by a private institution.
    Jerie's concerns are shared by representatives of trade unions from four regional NPÚ offices, from Pardubice, Central Bohemia, Ústí nad Labem, and Liberec. "We share his concern for the future of monuments, which are coming under increasing economic pressure without proper respect for the specific needs of preserving their cultural values recognized or still awaiting recognition," they stated in a letter sent to ČTK.
    The minister today refuted Jerie’s claims, stating that associations will be created for drawing funds from structural funds for Czech heritage sites, into which the heritage sites, i.e. state property, must be integrated. However, private entities will not be part of the associations, only state, municipal, or public law institutions.
    In September, the ministry signed a loan agreement with NPÚ for several major monuments - they will be loaned for the purpose of drawing funds for the project holders, who will be exclusively cities, said Jana Vohralíková from the ministry. After the eight-year project duration, the monuments will again return to the state. According to the ministry's plans, several Czech monuments are expected to receive over six billion crowns from the EU, and hundreds of millions of crowns are anticipated for individual projects.
    Goryczková said today that the heritage institute will want to stabilize economically and in terms of personnel - but she says this does not necessarily mean the departure of employees, but perhaps just a purposeful redistribution of job positions. The founder of NPÚ, i.e., the ministry, has never stated that the institute would be economically unstable. Of all thirty funding organizations, it is the most profitable, returning the largest percentage of subsidies to the state.
    The new director did not want to present specific steps she is planning or her concept. A team of experts will supposedly work on it for a month, after which it will be made public. Part of the competition included the obligation to submit a document in which candidates had to express their vision for "the first phases of performing the managerial function in the position of general director". In response to a question from ČTK regarding her opinion on the highly criticized draft of the new heritage law, Goryczková stated that she respects the proposal, has certain reservations about it, but does not wish to disclose them at this time.
    Goryczková has been working in heritage care since 1987, graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at VUT in Brno, and lectures at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ostrava. She specializes primarily in modern architecture, focusing on monuments of industrial architecture.
    Her predecessor Jerie offered his resignation to the minister back in June. The ministry announced the competition at the beginning of October. Among the three candidates who passed the second round of the selection procedure were a long-time senior ministry official and former "one-day" director of NPÚ Zdeněk Novák and former director of the Prague Information Service Václav Novotný.
    Last year, Jerie proposed a change to the NPÚ statute that would allow for the reorganization of the institute - it is sometimes criticized as a "colossus" with many employees who have reserves in the organization of work. However, the new statute was signed by the ministry only at the end of September 2007, but by then it had already commissioned an audit and suspended the preparation for reorganization. The ministry paid 1.5 million crowns for the audit and its results have been available since February of this year. However, they are secret. The ministry states that it does not want to publish them so that the new director of the institute can work with them.