The Czech government that emerges from this month's elections should adopt a clear euro entry target date to eliminate uncertainty for foreign investors in the country, the head of the Czech-German business chamber said.
Czechs will elect on May 28-29 a successor to the caretaker cabinet that has run the country for the past year which will have to handle a deepening structural budget deficit and help cement a fragile economic recovery.
European Union members are obliged to eventually join the single currency, but the Czechs have not set a firm target date.
The euro zone debt crisis has pushed the entry date into the future, with analysts quoting dates like 2017, and raised the question of whether to join the euro at all. But Czech-German Commerce and Trade Chamber (CNOPK) chief Radomir Simek said in an interview this week German companies wanted a timeframe for the euro for their business plans, and investors may look elsewhere if no clear plan comes about.
"It is necessary to set a clear plan," he said. "Then investors will know that it would be (a euro target date, for example,) in 2017, then they can get ready."
German companies have invested 524 billion crowns ($26.07 billion) in the country since 1993, about a quarter of all foreign direct investment.
CNOPK groups more than 500 German businesses employing more than 100,000 people in the country of 10.5 million, including Volkswagen's Skoda Auto and Siemens.
Sharp moves in the currency, such as the 23 percent drop between July 2008 and February 2009 that followed a fast rise, have been a headache for exporters.
Simek said putting off the decision on joining was damaging and that euro entry in 2009 brought more positives than negatives for Slovakia, the Czechs' former federation partner.
"Never ending postponing and excuses why it can't be done do not help," he said. Analysts in a Reuters poll this month pushed back by one year the expected Czech entry date to 2016.
The rightist Civic Democrats have refrained from setting a firm date, saying adoption should take place when advantages of such step are clear, but want the country to be ready by 2015. The leftist Social Democrats, ahead in the polls but not likely to win an outright majority, have said they plan to join in 2015 or 2016.
Opinion polls show a very tight race which may lead to a hung parliament and months of coalition building, which may produce a cabinet with small majority, or even a minority.