Market was a dirty word that was forbidden
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Josef Kreuter was born in Brandýs nad Labem on 25 April 1942. His early memories involve the end of the war and air raids. He completed the 11-year school in the early 1960s and applied to study foreign trade at the University of Economics (VŠE). As the son of a former tradesman, he had no chance of being admitted and had to go work as a grinder in a factory for a year. He then went to study finance and credit at the University of Economics. After graduation, he joined the State Bank of Czechoslovakia (SBČS), and following one year of military service at the Klement Gottwald Military Political Academy, he began working at the Institute of Economics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (ECAS). In 1967 he went to Nancy, France for an internship, returning in July 1968. He witnessed the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops in Prague and saw the shooting of protesters by Czechoslovak riot police on the anniversary of the invasion in August 1969. He briefly contributed to the literary critical magazine Tvář. He rejected several offers to join the Communist Party. In May 1984 he became an employee of the Prognostic Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. He worked there until 1990, when he became Deputy Minister of Strategic Planning, then Advisor to the Minister of Economy. During 1991 he was a member of the team that negotiated the Association Agreement with the European Communities. Later, he led the Czechoslovak delegation in negotiations with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In January 1992, he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and subsequently went to the Embassy of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in Paris as a councillor. In October 1993 he took up the post of Head of the Permanent Mission of the Czech Republic to the European Communities in Brussels, where he served until March 2000. He then worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Adviser to the State Secretary for European Affairs. He served as Ambassador to Switzerland until his retirement. In 2024, Josef Kreuter lived in Prague-Braník.
