BRATISLAVA, Slovak Republic-A group here has organized and is seeking to restart credit unions in this country. The group, led by Sobosiste Mayor Dana Ceranova, has turned to the World Council of Credit Unions and Poland's National Association of Cooperative Savings & Credit Unions for help reigniting cooperatives in what was once one-half of the then Czechoslovakia.
"Two things must exist for credit unions to thrive-interest and support of the people being served and the proper legislative and regulatory infrastructure," said WOCCU's Brian Branch, who visited the country with Pawel Grzesik, plenipotentiary head of NACSCU's Warsaw office. "Slovakians have expressed an interest, and our hope is that we can help them affect the proper legislative and regulatory solutions."
Branch and Grzesik met with officials from the republic's Central Bank, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Foreign Relations and Parliament in Bratislava to discuss policy framework for credit unions in a country dominated by urban retail banking. WOCCU reported that Slovak Republic policymakers expressed some concerns based on previous experiences with financial speculators and manipulators who used cooperative models to disguise pyramid schemes that negatively affected the country's economy.
Credit unions are not new to the country. In 1845, cooperative pioneer Samuel Jurkovic founded one of Eastern Europe's first credit unions in the village of Soboti?te in what is now the Slovak Republic.
